Game Review: Mad Max

A completely separate storyline from the famous franchise's latest movie, Fury Road, Mad Max the video game takes players for a dusty and violent romp through the Wasteland with the twin goals of finding a beastly V8 and crossing the Plains of Silence.

Our Wasteland friend Max Rockatansky is understandably peeved; somewhat angry in fact. After all, within the first few moments of this Warner Bros Entertainment video game, gone is his beloved XB Interceptor, captured and crushed by crazed War Boys of the warlord, wait for it, Scabrous Scrotus.

It is a harsh landscape, with the Scrotus war-bands constantly roaming the land. Despite his loner tendencies, Max needs allies and quickly comes across an interesting character in the hunchback Chumbucket.

Chum is a black-finger, a master of mechanical engineering, which in this world is more of a religion than a trade. He has a sanctuary, deep in the bowels of a long desert-locked cargo ship where he plies his trade.

Max and his loyal dog (named Dinky Di, but inexplicably pronounced Dinky Dee in the game) team up with Chum, who offers to build Max his Magnum Opus, his greatest work of engineering art, to replace the black-on-black, now scrapped XB.

Avalanche Studios, the game’s developer, is based in Sweden but managed to pay homage to the quintessential Aussie roots of the Mad Max franchise. Max’s voice actor is jarringly ocker in his delivery, but in a more subtle way the sunlight entering Chum’s abode forms the shape of the Australian mainland upon the wall of his workshop.

Mad Max is played in equal parts on foot and in vehicle. It is the cars of Mad Max that are central to the game play, however, with the vast majority of progression rewards based around car modifications and finding an aesthetically pleasing post-apocalyptic junker that is powerful, strong, fast and dangerous.

Boost the V6, add anti-boarder spikes, extra armour, nasty sharp rimmed tyres, flame throwers and grappling-hooks. There are plenty of vehicle modifications that Chum can apply to the Magnum Opus as the game progresses. All of these are paid for by finding scrap in the Wasteland.

This forces Max out to scrounge through the desert, driving the storyline as he discovers strongholds, hidden vaults, observation balloon outposts and more. Despite it being a desolate Wasteland, it is not devoid of interesting places to explore.

And each place, whether it is a simple observation balloon or a well-fortified war-band stronghold, contains a physical puzzle to be unlocked. Some generators might need fuel or a ramp might need to be lowered to gain access to inaccessible parts of structures. Each structure will have its secrets that may require some brain power to unlock, while brawn is required to defeat the defenders along the way.

Liberating a stronghold has benefits. More scrap is earned and Lord Scrotus’ grip and influence on the land is lowered.

Collecting scrap and ammo is one thing, but Max also needs to manage the other systems in the game. Collecting water and eating pet-food and even maggots are also essential to survival. Thankfully, Max’s iconic shotgun is far more reliable in this game than in the movies.

Max on foot can be a real pain to control. While the battles flow well enough with a simple, but reasonably deep combat system, just manoeuvring around can be a bit frustrating at times, forcing you to get Max back to his car as soon as possible.

Car combat is a big part of this game. While players can drop into a cockpit view in both his Magnum Opus or any car Max manages to hijack, it won’t help much during open-road battles.

Driving the Magnum Opus aggressively means lining up head-on rams, timing weapon shots such as the explosive Thunderpoon, or grinding side-by-side until the crazed war-boy vehicles are either destroyed or unmanned.

The all-important grappling hook is very important to the offensive capabilities of a post-apocalyptic battleground. It can be used to rip off wheels or doors to expose the driver if targeted correctly, which is a lot of fun.

As the story progresses there are plenty of violent Mad Max characteristics that bubble into the mix, as well as collectible relics to locate and Wasteland-organised races to win new vehicles as you play through the game.

The game's desolate setting is certainly not the most lush environment we have come across compared to other modern titles, but you could hardly set a Mad Max game on a tropical island.

Despite the dusty ash-strewn landscape, Mad Max is coloured by its over-the-top caricatures and array of crazy vehicles, but perhaps the developers could have taken a leaf from George Miller’s production crew and taken the vehicles to a more extreme design edge.

It’s violent, it’s harsh and it's sometimes repetitive and restrictive, but this high-octane romp through Mad Max's futuristic Wasteland is compelling all the same.