The end of the world has some caveats
Mad Max creates a fitting post apocalyptic wasteland yet not all of the gameplay systems create a fun time. This game begins with Max losing his precious V8 interceptor car to a bunch of raiders. Luckily he quickly meets Chumbucket who is a mechanic that thinks he is a Saint and must work with him to create a Magnum Opus. The Magnum Opus is a car that can be customized by the player in many different ways. You could create a tank that can't be killed or a spiked monstrosity that damages any car it touches. To make those changes to the car you will need to collect scrap that is littered around the wasteland.
Which will lead to many on foot confrontations and a Batman like combat system. Combat feels good and satisfying when you pull off a battle without getting hit. The game lets you upgrade Max to give him new abilities like being able to break shields or a shoulder attack. The combat may have not gotten old but the variety of enemies was pretty noticeable after a while. Along with seeing the same enemy types the boss encounters that weren't in a car were entirely the same battle. Big guy slowly tries to kill you while other enemies distract the player. Fortunately the world they create is the strongest point in this games favor.
Although I made sure that I mainly stuck to the main story arc this game did make me want to spend more time just driving through the world destroying things. Making things fall down is always satisfying so they littered the world with ramshackle towers/turrets/sniper nests that must be destroyed to stabilize the region or allow the player to attack a raider camp. Another nice touch was when some of the wasteland encounters were actually relevant to main story. With more time I could see the list of different objectives could get old since you will be doing similar missions over and over again.
The car you drive is obviously a very important part of this game. As I mentioned before you can upgrade it in many different ways yet something felt off on the way it controls. It is possible upgrading the handling more could have helped but my car always felt like it could easily drift off course into a rock if I even slightly missed my turn. Which lead to me mostly ignoring any car related side content like races except when I had plenty of Thunderpoon ammo. Blowing off the armor on a enemy car and them ramming them till they explode is satisfying when you pull it off without crashing the car.
Overall the developers managed to create a world I wanted to see more of. Yet some of the ways it plays made me annoyed at it's shortcomings. So it comes down to if your more interested in the world of Mad Max than the gameplay. If you want to see a bitter world that has been beaten down to the worst of humanity then this is the game for you. Just go in knowing that you might not enjoy all of the content in the game.
