Belligerent Max, At Least

Mad Max nails the 'strayan wasteland aesthetic. The rest of the game, ... well. I'm having fun with it.

At its best, Mad Max is scratching the itch that I was aiming for in Assassin's Creed Rogue: Mysterious destinations, emergent random encounters, and a story that I can basically ignore. But for every oil rig I blow up and every War Boy I punch to death, I can't help but think of the game that might have been.

Many of Mad Max's mechanics hint at a survival-based design that was smoothed-out before release. Early on, Max has short supplies of fuel, water, and ammo, forcing him to keep a close eye on his inventory and to scramble for salvage like a true wastelander. But this tension is ruined when upgrades make fuel depletion trivial; when water becomes plentiful; and when ammo starts getting refilled automatically. After a few hours, any semblance of resource-based danger is totally gone.

Meanwhile, the pacing of missions and upgrades is just plain wrong from practically the beginning. As soon as the world opens up, you'll encounter objectives that make you and your car feel underpowered, and a whole ton of bright red harpoon targets that straight-up tell you to buy some upgrades. But these same upgrades are blocked by your progress in "reducing influence," by completing said objectives. The game all but requires you to grind through several dungeon-clears and random fetch quests before you've unlocked enough upgrades, and collected enough salvage currency, to actually make progress in the story missions -- which are anemic and abridged in comparison with the optional stuff.

Mad Max's fighting engine, a relatively straightforward combo-and-counter affair (see Batman, Shadow of Mordor et al) would be pretty satisfying if not for a couple of heinous bugs. One, that the camera frequently makes certain attack angles impossible to see. And two, that enemies are sometimes capable of starting an attack and landing it while you're stuck in an animation. Many games with this kind of combat system allow you to "flow" into a counter mid-move; Mad Max just lets the War Boy hit you.

And I have to add, that the menu bugs, of all bugs, are irritating enough that they really bring the experience down. Shortcuts to new log entries break the menu hierarchy every time. Buying an upgrade triggers an input-stuttering save, every time. Just navigating the galleries is a pain. The menu UI was clearly a junior employee's task that no one ever had the time to fix.

Despite all these un-missable, far-reaching flaws, though, it's still easy for me to get stuck in a "just one more objective" loop in Mad Max's world. It helps that the driving, while still not great - steering a junker through a windy desert feels just like you'd expect - is good enough to make exploring the world legitimately enjoyable. Like my first Great Sea adventure in The Wind Waker, the world's relative emptiness is essentially a feature. Becoming engrossed in the well-rendered post-apocalyptic wasteland is an important, and effective, part of the experience.

Mad Max isn't as good as it should be, but it's managed to get some sharp hooks in me anyway.

Progress: Met Pink Eye.