Have you ever heard of Mad Max? The post-apocalyptic world of not so distant future where oceans went dry all of a sudden, and humanity couldn’t come up with anything better than going for BDSM attire, jumping on the trucks that are every redneck’s wet dream, and starting a war on each other. For resources, but predominantly fun. Among this party of life, a lone traveling madman with obscure goal and hair-trigger temper appears. Known as Max, he traverses the endless desert on his trusty Interceptor V8, getting into all sorts of troubles with local warlords who don’t know who to mind their own fucking business and don’t mess with a dude who has two cisterns on the back of his car and zero fucks to give.
And here comes the personal moment. Mel Gibson is Mad Max. For me. The original trilogy is what makes Mad Max Mad Max. For me. I know there are new movies with another dude playing Mad Max, and now some side flick without Mad Max in it at all, but I’ll be straight, I didn’t see neither of them so I can’t say how good or bad are they. All I can say is that they don’t appeal to me since Mel Gibson is Mad Max, and the low budget combined with gritty Australian post-apocalyptic BDSM party scene aesthetics of the first three movies is what makes it memorable for me. It’s just too batshit crazy, and I doubt you can replicate the style. Besides, I grew up on the original Mad Max, so the choice is really easy.
The video game I’m going to write about today apparently happens after the movie. The new movie, since it shows the gang of post-apocalyptic skinheads pursuing Mad Max because of reasons, who surprisingly looks like Max Payne to me by the way, and at one point they even succeed. Max gets ganged up, jumped on, beaten to a pulp by skinheads and their leader. His car, his signature double-barreled shotgun, and clothes are taken from him, and he’s left to die in the desert. Seemingly.
But he’s mad, so instead of dying like any other normal human being after the attack of a ruthless skinhead gang, he comes back to his senses, and on pure hatred comes for more. He gets into a fight with the leader, and despite the leader being a steroid-abusing mountain of muscles, Max almost beats him, and even shoves a working chainsaw in his forehead.
Anyway, he loses, and again finds himself kicked out in the desert, only with a dog by his side (a moment ago it was part of a skinhead crew, but got betrayed, beaten up, and kicked together with Max), and a rather straightforward goal of retaliation. On his way, he meets a hunchback car mechanic who cites Toyota Corolla user manual like some sort of bible, and uses him and his creation called Magnum Opus (basically a rusty jalopy) to get back at skinheads and also come into a possession of V8. And now you know the plot.
I played this game on PS4 a while ago, somewhere around summer 2018, I think, and I actually really liked it. I didn’t expect it to be good; I didn’t expect it to be anything, to be honest. I got it for “free” as a part of Monthly Games Giveaway and decided to give it a shot. And as I already said, I liked it. Liked it to a point where I beat it at least three times, and achieved platinum, which turned out to be a rather tedious process, and only confirms how much I actually enjoyed playing it.
To prove it, I’m going to write the most incoherent description of the gameplay where I’ll jump from one topic to another without any rhyme or reason. Let’s begin.
The game is really simple. I would avoid spoiling the plot, only just say that it lost a huge deal of original Mad Max charm, and instead took on some violent, sadistic, sometimes even borderlines maniac kind of atmosphere. And don’t get me wrong, in the original trilogy the world also was twisted and full of violent gangs that did crazy stuff for the thrill and laughs, but somehow, the world still felt goofy, and full of twisted humor. Here is everything again, too damn serious to a point, where they tried too hard to make everyone realistic.
Every character in the game is despicable, and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever (except the dog, the dog is a bro). The baddies are your typical baddies. They are bad because they are bad, they are violent, psychotic, wear parts of their victims as trophies, and in general make sure you see them as targets for retaliation, and just to have fun over a straightforward, yet surprisingly addictive combat system.
Problem is that other survivors aka good guys aren’t much better, either. And while it might make sense in this world where homo homini lupus, it also sort of irritating, since the good guys are basically useless. And I mean it. The good guys, before Max appears, are basically dying, doing nothing about this situation, and just talk a lot. Then Max appears and has to fix their shit. Four times. There are four bases that require your help, and all four of them are just a fortified debris when you arrive. Total mess. Multiply it by four and by the end of it, you’re going to wish they would die.
In fact, maybe that’s the humor of the situation, is that the man who is called mad is perhaps the most sane individual among the society of psychos. Mad Max is a pragmatic, tough, strong silent type who does things out of need, and not a good heart. His views on the world and whatever goes on there make sense. This is probably the reason why I kept playing in the first place. Because the hero has presence, and in the world of psychos who love to spit lots of words and play tough, he just gets things done with zero fucks given. In general, the entire premise of the game is the journey of the man with zero fucks left who just reminds why it is a bad idea to fuck around with a guy who constantly helps other motherfuckers to find out.
What is actually addictive, though, is the upgrade system. Again, it is simple, yet you just can’t stop grinding. At least that was the thing in my case. You have Legend Level, which is upgraded by beating challenges (also, those challenges reward you with points that turn Max into a better and stronger version of himself). The Legend Level and Missions open the upgrades. Both for Max and for the car. For Max, it is as straightforward as it gets, since with every new level you open new knuckledusters, armor, styles, shotguns, you get the idea. With the car, it is a bit more complicated since driving is perhaps one of the most important parts of the game and developers put a lot of thought behind it. So, you open upgrades for a lot of parts of your car, be it engine, exhaust, armor, weapons, bumpers, grills, tires, and even bodies. All of that crap impacts on acceleration, weight, handling. And that’s where presets called Archangels appear where you have pre-built cars (if you’re lazy and don’t want to create your own).
Besides that Mad Max the Game is your typical open world journey where the map is sliced in regions and every region has a number of repeatable stuff to do, and in order to progress the plot you have to do at least some of it. There are bases to free, totems to demolish, snipers to kill, convoys to rob. Enough action, and at some moments a little too much to my licking. I decided to replay the game recently (I don’t know whether it is just the right time, or maybe because there was some rumbling on the social media regarding people involved with the game, anyway, I just wanted to replay it but now on PC since I heard the graphics on PC was better), and after beating few missions I found the process tedious and artificially prolonging the game. I’m not sure I have whatever it takes to beat it again, but I must say that if there’s one thing that I love in this game, it is driving.
Driving here was implement just perfect, if you ask me. I mean, it has a very nice balance between arcade and simulation, where on one hand you can feel the weight of the car, the traction of the road, and how change in surfaces and tires changes the experience from driving, while on the other you’re not restricted too much and still have a freedom to do some crazy shit like a triple spin in the air while harpooning some poor feral motherfucker who just tries to get by in the world of endless sand, war, and despair.
And the map is big enough and gives you enough roads to have fun. My only grudge was that you discover the magic of V8 too late in the game. I would even rather say almost when you’re done. And if you’re anything like me, and tend to maniacally clear everything you stumble across, you’ll find yourself at the rather unpleasant moment where you just opened the best engine, but there’s no point to it. You’re already did it all. And mindlessly driving around is only fun for a while.
Oh, and regarding maniacally clearing everything. If you’re going for platinum, you’re going to find yourself in a pickle since by the time you cleared everything, you’ll lock yourself out of one or two challenges you need to complete all the challenges in one playthrough. It happened to me and I wasn’t very happy about it. And apparently, since Warner Brothers killed off the servers, you’re unable to get all the achievements because some of them require a connection. Which sucks because the game is strictly a single player and I see no reason for it to be that way, but what can you do about it? Apparently nothing. Or maybe safe-scum your way somehow. I don’t know.