I haven't actively hated a game in a long while. This game is littered with poor design decisions and almost all activities you do are either super boring or not very fun. Worse yet I feel like the game doesn't respect anyone's time.
The only redeeming quality is the vehicle combat, which is at best, alright. Still very repetitive in nature, and not that satisfying when the game doesn't force you to change up tactics enough for a 30hour game. It sounds crazy but I think Avalanche out-Ubisofted Ubisoft. I was 1/2 way through (probably two dozens of hours) until I realized I'm just not having fun at all. I actually reinstalled Shadow of Mordor and having a blast playing through that game again.
Edit:
I'll go into a bit more detail:
- Visually boring world: This game looks stunning graphics-wise but the world design is very very boring. It's worse than Red Faction Guerilla landscape boring.
- Same-y ground combat: The arkham combat feels... exactly like what it was. Same enemy types and so on. The game did nothing to elevate the arkham combat like how Shadow of Mordor or Sleeping Dogs had.
- Taking over oil tank supply outposts: Most outposts you take over would have you get out of your car, and fight your way till the end. There's one particular type of outpost that's designed to be a "treasure-hunt" type game where you have to find oil canisters and throw them in to oil tanks? It's not a problem if there were 3 oil tanks to find in the outpost, but most of these outposts have more than 10. Finding them is often frustrating.
- Minefield side missions: Yes, you don't have to do them but they are essential to lowering enemy influence in region to 0%, which is a criteria for unlocking certain parts for your cars. You have a "radar" and you have to find the invisible mines which will appear when you stand close enough. You have to be in the car for the radar to work. And then you have to get out of the car and watch a 7 second animation play out to disarm it. Get back on the car. Repeat for 3 times per side mission. Oh, also, you have to fast travel to your base to switch to the "radar" car to complete these missions. Tedious.
- Overly long "immersive" animations: Okay, I get that Avalanche is trying to make it seem a desolate wasteland and a struggle to survive, but very game-y things like replenishing health by eating food forces you to watch this 5 to 10 second animation that gets really tiresome. Sometimes you just want to move on. I wouldn't mind having these immersive moments if the game wasn't so obvious about the "game" part.
- Use of the Mad Max license: It's sort of hard to build a 30 hour open world game based on movies that are inherently straightforward with a simple theme and premise. Other than beating you over the head with the theme of "survival", it doesn't really go into heroism and folklore as the movies do. Max is kind of an ass in the story. Some aspects (like spirituality in the post-apocalypse or reminiscing about the life before the apocalypse) are explored so ham-fistedly, lacking the subtlety to invoke the viewers imagination the same way the movies do. Mad Max just does nothing to expand on the legend of Max and just fills the game with long and meaningless side stuff. (I'll say the ending is quite good, but not worth playing through the whole game to see)
- Ubisoft open world game needs a "Please Stop" award: I'm so glad we had Shadow of Mordor from last year and MGS V from this year: both games deviate from the GTA III inspired, Ubisoft perfected formula of open world games. This game I think is the last straw for me, I don't have that many hours to invest in games anymore. At least Ubisoft tries to have a good story and solid gameplay to back their games up with. Mad Max has neither.
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