Quick Look: Mad Max

Austin continues to be a treasure.

@chocolatebear: Open exploration world a bit like Fallout (and not this Ubisoft quest grind stuff), car combat and perhaps looks from this Mad Max game, shooting and smoothness from RAGE and a bit of Fury Road madness and we're done.

O, and I almost forgot the nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor so you can mess around with the warlord hierarchy.

This reminds me a lot of the Arkham Aslyum/Shadow of Mordor formula, and there's nothing wrong with that. Hearing it's a fantastic PC version makes me want to play it, but not for a while given it seems pretty middle of the road.

Now I'm just imagining a Fury Road game FTL-style, where you are almost constantly on the move for the entire game and have to make choices between supplies/other people and time.

@comradesolar: That game exists. It's called Convoy and it's for PC. You can get it on Steam.

I gotta say, even though the melee is a carbon copy of Arkham combat system, I really dig the way Avalanche amped up the realism and brutality to the nth degree, some of those strikes and suplexes look unbelievably vicious; the animation is supremely weighty and detailed.

not sure why this wasn't pushed back. directly competing with MGSV lol.

hmm, two open world games to choose from. one has years of development and a massive budget and the other is a licensed borderline tie-in. what's the score here? using this project to buy time and effort for JC3?

(edit: that framerate lol. or is the framerate so high it looks nearly slow-motion 24/7? might just be a mix of really poor motion blur abuse + bad framerates)

I mean, there was that Convoy game, but I don't think it was very good.

@gbeast can you put this up on youtube please? i'm always having trouble with the player here

Alex seems really hard on that game. It looks good imo

Re: The duration of the post-apocalypse - I don't want to overanalyze a series that specifically has been said not to be connected, but if you do consider all the movies to belong to one timeline, I don't think Max necessarily predates the apocalypse.

The first Mad Max is kind of a weird movie that doesn't take any time explaining itself, but I don't think it's pre-apocalyptic.. Max is a highway cop, yes, but he's a weird Death Race style of cop on a ramshackle squad in a world that seems to be falling apart at the seams. I have come to think of it as a sort of "during apocalypse", kind of like the England of Children of Men. Resources are clearly scarce - perhaps the world ending event has already occurred and the consequences just haven't quite torn apart society yet. Then Road Warrior is people fighting over the scraps, Beyond Thunderdome is the reemergence of "civilization" and Fury Road takes place in a society that has basically become as sedentary as the resources available will allow. Which is probably a process that'd take a couple hundred years, so it probably still isn't credible one man could live through all that, but I've never lived through an apocalypse, so I can't be sure.

That said, for all that they claim that this is a game this is no more connected to Fury Road than Fury Road was to its predecessors, I call BS on that. If you look at the films through the lens of that rough timeline, it clearly belongs to the end of it and bears little resemblance to anything before.

It doesn't really bear resemblance to Mad Max at all, though from a narrative perspective, which has been my issue with the game every time it's been shown.

Its been a long road getting from there to here.

@art_vandelay: after watching the whole thing... Alex talks about it and plays it like he really likes it but is making excuses as to why its not good. Its ok if a game is of a certain formula imo. The setting seems to vibe really well with that formula.

I bought Mad Max on Tuesday along with the movie and I am really enjoying the game. I agree with every single critique against it and despite that, I still really like the game.

This game just seems like a giant "to do' list. Do this and do that to upgrade your shit so you can do more of this and that, but more efficiently. And repeat this shit at nauseum.

*Ahem* it's guzzoline

@indridcipher: I don't think I "played it like I really like it" so much as just played it. The game is OK. There are a lot of things that bug me about it and I don't think it's terribly inventive or exciting, but it can be enjoyable. I don't think I made any excuses during the course of that video. I just explained aspects of it I do not like.

mad max was only cool with tina turner

@alex: Fair enough, must be some disconnect im having with really liking what im seeing from the game and maybe some critique's i find easily forgotten in the face of Thunderpooning cars into giant explosions. Reminds me a lot of Shadows of Mordor, Sleeping Dogs, and Infamous SS all games i really really liked. They all have flaws but what they do well is a lot of fun. Anyways i enjoyed the quick look, you 3 are making a fantastic team.

I've been playing this all day. This game is awesome- I love it. For me it's exactly what a Mad Max game should be. There are a few problems with it, but overall it's really solid and it runs amazing on PC.

I feel like this would be MUCH better in my eyes if it didn't come out the same exact day as MGSV. This looks really barren and boring when compared. Also I don't like that WB is now just shoving their big games onto the Rocksteady Batman engine. It seems lazy and cheap after it wore out its welcome on Mordor.

I've been enjoying it.

Warner Bros. probably figured that whatever sales it lost due to launching the same day as MGSV would be more than made up from by increased sales from the synergy of releasing the same day as the "Mad Max: Fury Road" Blu-ray.

You should have just ended this right there when those vehicles couldn't get to you. That says everything about this game.

So many games have given a template of how to do car combat. Batman and Mordor gave templates of how to do 3rd person combat. Borderlands gave a template of how to do fun stuff in a post modern wasteland.

It's not even like they looked at any of that and decided, lets go in this other direction, or that direction. It's like they were putting a licensed game into a world before any of those other things had even existed yet.

I think we all know the answer to this question.

As an Australian myself I find that this game being very meh is thoroughly disappointing.

And what's with its aesthetics, what made fury road so gorgeous was its incredible use of bright vibrant color that contrasted so well with the insane brutal nature of the films content and this just looks like every other post apoc game, reminds me way more of Rage than anything else. :(

Looks extremely boring...

Ha!

Way to go to pick apart a really cool game, that's not only super solid but actually features some really fun and original mechanics. The world feels very much alive and in the vein of the movies. The PC port is also amazing. Avalanche Studios deserves better coverage. Read the steam page reviews for better opinions and give this game a chance. Meanwhile non-sensical Metal Gear gets praised as GOTY because you can make the horse poop.

That wrestling stuff is some goofy, awful shit. Did the people who made this ever even watch the movies? At what point did they decide "this grim post-apocalyptic film needs some more suplexes"?

I wont be buying this not because of the game. But I prefer the Old Mad Max not this new america is one.

@bunny_fire: ...what? You do realize that this takes place in Australia, right?

i think the problem that at least GBeast has with it is that if it followed the nature of the movies it would be a much more interesting and unique experience. I agree that maybe they're being too harsh on it as it seems like quite the well rounded and pretty looking game, but it just seems way too cluttered with pointless busywork and IMO doesn't feel like it captures the desperation and intensity of the movies. I would have LOVED if they went for a much more desolate and oppressive open world environment, where even travelling between outposts was a harrowing experience. To each their own but i don't know why the world being more alive is true to the series; it actually seems to operate in disservice to it. Granted I'll probably pick it up eventually, just not at full price.

Also what you said about MGSV is being equally reductive; don't know if you're trying to prove a point by doing that. There's (also) a helluva lot going on in that game and on top of it it just feels so good to play. I'm surprised at how addictive it is, and this is coming from someone who knows next to nothing about Metal Gear. I actually think it pulls off the desolate environment that Mad Max should have in a much better way.

I am glad the thunderpoon was installed. The thunderpoon needed installing. Thunderpoon.

This game doesn't look so bad, I'm curious whether Alex will review this. Also accidentally running over someone doesn't mean you run over the entire group afterwards.

I'm enjoying my time with the game quite a bit. In fact, I picked up this and MGSV on launch and haven't even fired up Metal Gear yet. I'll admit that I'm a sucker for the setting though: It feels like an actual post disaster world to me for the most part. The car combat, especially later on, really helps to sell it too.

Only real problems I have are minor ones: The map doesn't show elevation so you're kind of guessing where the map marker is guiding you to sometimes and, honestly, the dialogue can repeat a lot if you spend more time exploring than doing the main story.

It's pretty but seems a bit meh. It has one thing over Mad Max Fury Road though. A fairly smooth and stable frame rate. I really liked that movie but I found it pretty hard to watch due to the messing with frame rate in post rather than in camera. I had to look it up because I thought it wasn't playing back properly and missing frames. If you step through the frames you can clearly see that on some frames the motion jumps twice as much meaning they dropped some frames to speed the motion up and it just feels like a laggy game to my eyes.

I think this looks pretty nice, I'm going to get it when it's discounted.

@bhlaab: Yeah kinda, right?

I just watched the movie this weekend, then watched this Quick Look.

The movie was shocking and bizarre and colorful and really really hyper fast kinda all the time. From what I've seen of this quick look, it looks good, but it looks about on par with other open-world interaction games.

Will play when it hits the bargain bin. Make Rage 2.

well at least it looks really amazing!

This doesn't seem all that bad. Something to pick-up during the slow season when it's on a nice discount.

When I unlocked the ability to give Max a flying arm bar - I was in love.

Also, best open world game since Sleepy Dogs.

Mad Max Fury Mode...really?

I bought this on a recent steam sale! Neat game!