Gaming

Mad Max: A confusing mess that ignores its explosive movie roots

Just weeks before launch, the game is plagued by mechanical problems and lack of focus.

John Robertson – Aug 11, 2015 10:58 am | 13

Mad Max looks exciting, but John Robertson isn’t entirely convinced.

COLOGNE, Germany—As the cliché goes, it’s a game of two halves. In Mad Max‘s case, one half is in the car, and the other is out of it: on wheels, on foot.

Already, then, Mad Max bears little in common with Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the most well-constructed action movies of recent years, and one obsessed with keeping the pace fast and furious by locking Max behind the wheel as much as possible. Going it alone and not allowing the content of a movie to define a game can be a good idea if you’ve got other ideas to use as your design pillars… but sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Mad Max, which is as much about third-person action as it is souped-up vehicular combat.

In Mad Max there is just one drivable vehicle, called the Magnum Opus. The “great work” is central to the game: without it, navigating the Wasteland to find missions—ones that take place with and without the car—would be a massive trudge given the scale of Mad Max’s open world. The Opus’ wheels, engine, grill, weapons, and more can be upgraded to alter both its functions and aesthetics. Trying to provide a mechanical friend that evolves as the adventure plays out is clearly the idea, although it remains to be seen whether there’s enough depth to the customisation for that to work out.

All kinds of weapons can be fired while inside the car, no matter whether you’re moving or stationary. Chum Bucket, a fanatic with a religious-grade dedication to all things mechanical, has homed himself in the back of your car and takes care of most weapon duties. Rockets are useful for taking out adversarial vehicles, the shotgun is best for ending whomever is brave/stupid enough to jump onto the Magnum Opus, and the harpoon gun can bring down structures or rip open locked grates.

At the tap of a button you automatically fire your chosen weapon at the closest target, while holding down aim engages a slow-motion mode so that you can execute more specialised shots. Neither firing system works especially well, even after 20 minutes of practise. Auto fire frequently chooses the wrong target, which is exacerbated by the fact that it’s difficult to see what’s closest to you when you can’t easily identify what’s behind you, particularly when you’re driving at speed.

The problem is most frustrating when operating the harpoon gun. Objects that you’d planned to hit and tear down to complete an objective are often ignored in favour of some piece of meaningless debris. As a result, you need to drive back around and line yourself up again ad nauseum. Alternatively, you can trigger slow-mo and aim manually to be sure of hitting your target. Well, that’s the idea, at least, but even that doesn’t always work as intended. The slow speed at which you move the aiming reticule makes precise firing extremely fiddly, which is made worse due to the frequency at which even a seemingly well-aimed shot misses the target altogether.

On a couple of occasions I fired a harpoon directly at my target, only to see it speed right through the thing and not register any kind of impact whatsoever. Hopefully this is a symptom of playing a “work in progress,” but with so little time left between now and Mad Max’s release on September 1, it’s disconcerting to see such huge bugs still occurring.

More stable are the sections in which Max abandons the car and takes to the Wasteland on foot. Combat is, essentially, of the exact same type as in Rocksteady’s Arkham games. Heavy and normal attacks are supplemented by counter attacks, and the acquisition of melee weapons. The similarity to Arkham games goes so far as enemies having a very familiar-looking icon hover over their head to indicate that they’re about to throw a punch, letting you know that now’s the time to hit the counter-attack button. It’s a system that works well, but we already knew that from other games. This is very much a case of pragmatism over originality.

In a game of this scope, however, it’s unfair to think that every element should be entirely original. While combat interaction enforces the same rules as the Arkham games, the visual tone is quite different. Max is not as agile or as powerful as Gotham’s hero, reducing the instances of punches that send enemies flying and entirely removing any acrobatic flips or spins away from danger. Instead, fisticuffs in Mad Max elicit more of a bar brawl atmosphere in which everyone seems to be improvising rather than relying on mastered martial arts skills.

Structurally, the mission I played revolved around driving to the designated location and, well, killing everything. On the way I came across various optional objectives in the form of side missions that can be completed at random, including one that involved killing lone snipers, and another that involved collecting the scrap needed to upgrade the Magnum Opus.

Given how wonderful the Mad Max movies are at creating a very strong sense of place and bestowing it with a personality through the use of characters and unique (if sometimes backwards) technologies, these optional distractions must be authored in a way that elevates Max’s world and genuinely adds to its exposition. Any sort of Assassin Creed-style missions-for-the-sake-of-missions is going to cause a distinct disconnect between the character of the world, and the language of the game’s mechanics.

Of perhaps all of the games shown at Gamescom, Mad Max was the most confusing of all. On the surface, the majority of its design decisions seem to make sense, but the reality was less than impressive. Hopefully, that uncertainty was thanks to being thrown into a later stage of the game without any context of what had come before. If that’s not the case, however, then we might be looking at yet another movie-to-game creation that will end up in the bargain bucket mere weeks after launch.

Mad Max launches on Windows, PS4, and Xbox One on September 1.

John Robertson

Based out of London, England, John is a freelance writer specialising in video games and popular culture. When not locked in front of a computer he's glued to the viewfinder of his camera. Canon only.

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