Quick Look: Mad Max

oh boy, I hope this isn't bad, but the lack of review copies is not promising at all.

Nor is that AI in the first minute

I'm mad that this wasn't up sooner.

finally

That's not his blood

well now you've got it to the max.

I'm in an intense fury.

This looks like something I'm going to have a LOT of fun with once MGSV is out of my mind.

Do we really want to go down that road?

This game looks rough and janky as hell. I really didn't have much hope for this game and this puts the mediocre nail in the mediocre coffin. I hope all the people who are obsessed with post-apocalypse games (I'm assuming those are the ones who were hyping this game up before release) get some enjoyment out of this.

Those are good explosions. And don't worry about the timeline, @vinny! It's more like a group of stories drawn from a mythology than a series.

Thunderpoon?

I like this game a little too much.

I'm just here for the gasoline.

Annoyed Alex joins up with Vicious Vinny and Angry Austin on this Mad Max quick look

Think this game is still $36 bucks on GMG if anyone has some mild interest. Got it at that price so I got something shiny and new to play after Metal Gear

Mediocre! Not really though.

Shadow of Cardoor.

lotta clouds in the sky for a waterless apocalypse...

I've only played a couple of hours of this so far, but I've been digging it.

I'm really enjoying the game so far. Driving through storms and convoys is intense, punching War Boys never gets old and blowing up War Criers is so satisfying.

Chumbucket can repair your car while you are in it, just have to be standing still. You can also instantly quick fix your car with scrap.

Legend rank gates progress for those skill upgrades from the mystical dude, also some main missions have minimum requirements.

Fuel later on is heavily used by your side flamethrowers.

I have been on the same page as Alex regarding the power of the car for a while, but just today have hit point where the difference is has become quite appreciable.

The big storms are your best ways to make tons of money early on, you can easily snag 1-2k scrap per storm from the flying crates. Stay out and go fishing! They are awesome.

Some of the melee combat achievements are "kill X enemies, before taking damage", so they pop when you finally take that damage after killing a bunch of dudes earlier, like you did from the sniper.

Water murder was priceless!

Also man the console version is not doing this game any favors, playing the PC version at a steady 60 frames, no pop in, and just orders of magnitude better fidelity.

Alex with his Ascension impression right out of the gate.

"Scrotus Scatorus?" So GWAR: The Video Game then?

I'm looking forward to picking this up now.

I find it funny that Vinny is worried for Chumbucket when he is the biggest maniac when it comes to open world games.

Looks pretty decent to me. I haven't been completely open world-ed out yet, so I think I'll be picking this up.

This seems like one of those games where the actual player reaction will be way more positive than the critic reaction simply because average people aren't playing every single formulaic open world game that comes out like reviewers are. Same reason why something like Binary Domain appealed to players who hadn't played the umpteen other over the shoulder cover shooters that came before it, but was met very tepidly by critics.

I think i'm the guy thats going to prefer to play this over MGS5. I really like Mad Max.

Watching this I could see how a game that draws from Fury Road could've been rad. I like that they have a guy hanging out on your car but that's not really enough. The cool thing about Fury Road is that people in this world just climbed around their vehicles all the time doing gun stuff, repair stuff, even boosty stuff while the vehicles were in motion.

I could imagine a game where you had a crew of dudes on the car and you could order them around Pikmin style. Repair the vehicle while I drive! Do that thing where you spit water into the intake! Go gather all that scrap! Attack! That'd be rad. Shame that's not this.

the best part about this game is that sprint is on right trigger because why wouldn't he control like a car

Technical issues aside (I'm on PC, and it's buttery smooth 60 fps for me), this game is actually pretty fun. The sandstorms are awesome to get caught in, the car combat is pretty fun once you get some upgrades on your car, and the melee combat is... adequate. It's just a somewhat stripped down version of the Arkham combat, but it works.

Only thing I hate so far, is the inability to climb up anything, aside from the designated spots with conspicuous yellow paint on them.

I think some of the reviews have been ridiculously harsh on it (people seriously gave it 5's and 6's?). This game is the quintessential 7.5-8 review. And if SweetFX lets me tune the visuals to pop the colours more like Fury Road, then even better.

I can imagine, that said, I really like the look of the game on console anyway, and from what I've played so far the framerate feels mostly solid. There's definitely a lot of texture pop-in/fade-in whilst driving around, but I find most of the time I'm focusing on what's further in the distance whilst playing that I don't actually notice it (as opposed to it sticking out like a sore thumb in all of the footage I'd seen over the last couple of months). But yeah, I'd imagine it's lovely on PC.

Open World Vinny is the best.

@meatball:I mostly noted it because up to now a lot of the console versions have been relatively close to how they look on PC too. This is just one of the first games where I am noticing a significant difference with a naked eye through a recorded video no less. Still this QL definitely looks better then the footage that has been shown pre release that's for sure.

i think this game looks pretty cool. Like a good fun surface level open world game. Lately ive enjoyed things like Infamous Second Son and Shadow of Mordor a lot. They seem a lot more easily digestible and i beat them and even platinumed both. Where as the huge sprawling complex games like Dragon Age and Withcher i've loved for a few dozen hours and then just fell off completely and could never get back into them. I don't think i'll buy this game anytime soon but its definitely a game that I think i will enjoy when i get my hands on it.

I dunno, this looks really fun. A bit slow and repetitive in parts, but I'm not burnt out on Batman combat (Combatman?) just yet. I'm a little tired of arid wastelands, but hey, it's Mad Max.

Looks like a rental or budget buy for sure.

I liked Shadow of Mordor at the time, but I honestly think the unbelievable amount of praise it got was due to 2014 being a fucking awful year for big games.

The game got unbelievably repetitive, and the Nemesis system stopped mattering less than half-way through the story since the combat got so stupidly easy that every enemy just became mindless cannon fodder; which turns the game into the most generic open world game you could ever play. The idea of the Nemesis system is still amazing, but I don't think they pulled it off at all. The story in that game, by the way; was ATROCIOUS, especially if you're like me and actually care about Tolkien's world.

Mad Max is what would've happened if Shadow of Mordor had been released at the end of 2015. It isn't getting the same pass Mordor got from reviewers because it released on a year where we've already seen some of the most impressive open world games ever. Had Mordor been released on the eve of MGSV, I very much doubt people would've been so high about it.

As far as the game itself goes, I think this looks super fun. Just a solid open world game that came at a time where a lot of people didn't really WANT this particular brand of open world game, and that's kind of a shame.

Mordor was my #3 game last year, but I gotta agree with most of this.

MEDIOCRE!

love the visual style and it looks fun but they really couldn't have picked a worse release date for this

Like all roads it leads to rome

GB is now reddit.

From what I've seen, this game looks alright. The driving around the wasteland is what I was hoping Rage would be like; open not mostly within canyons. I enjoyed Rage, I just wished it felt more like a world than a theme park. Then again, I guess that applies to many video games...

Seems like a good game, don't see why every site is nitpicking it apart. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!!!

He uses less fuel after you put a point in that option because video games! Also those storms are some of the best parts. More games need good weather systems.

@rockstar_nmg: That perk system, it's the second time I've heard someone nitpick it/make a comment about it. As if a video game needs to have realistic systems.

If this game would have come out during the summer I think people would have been a lot easier on it. Coming out on the same day as MGS 5 was a real dumb move.

This looks real boring.

With regards to Austin's complaints about the game telling you that you need a Level 4 Harpoon, I feel like it would be super annoying to constantly shoot it and have it just bounce off. Furthermore, waiting for audio cues from Chumbucket(?) while aiming would not work with the slow-mo. I mean, Alex was running into groups of cars, some of which were harpoonable, some of which were not, and honestly I couldn't tell them apart visually. I understand Austin's desire for a sparseness to the world and the UI elements, but I'm guessing convenience won over visual appeal in testing.

This looks ok, if not pretty good, I don't think saying it is mediocre does it justice. Sandwiched between Witcher and MGS is going to be rough. Tag on Fallout later this year who knows how that will be like...hell I have a feeling even Fallout is going to have a hard time stacking up against those two.

One of the few times release window and timing actually matters it seems. In another world where Witcher didn't release right around the same time of Mad Max the movie and this game slip into that first slot I can imagine a wave of "movie game that is surprisingly not trash but in fact pretty good" buzz similar to Batman years past.

GotY this year seems like it'll be a bloodbath of open world games. This game probably won't be participating in it tho unless it is hiding some surprises later on.

@darson: It's not that bad... yet

I feel like a Mad Max game ought to be weirder than this.

Ramming restricted, need Thunderpoon ... video games.