Review: Gritty ‘Mad Max’ Burns Brightly But Flames Out

(Image: Warner Bros. Interactive)

It is impossible to experience the new Mad Max video game without constantly thinking about George Miller’s spectacular Mad Max: Fury Road.

The game is not specifically based on the movie — it’s more of a canonical homage — but it’s clear that the developers were anxious to duplicate the wild, chaotic blend of gutsy realism and cartoonish excess that made Fury Road the best action film in recent memory.

They only partially succeed. An open-world romp through the blasted, post-apocalyptic wastelands popularized in Miller’s big-screen quartet, Mad Max is filled with unflinching violence, high-speed high jinks, and enough gas fires to give Al Gore a coronary. But it also falls in lockstep with fellow open-world games, eschewing a coherent plot for a sprawling map littered with repetitive, grinding quests. At times it shines bright as chrome, but it also flirts dangerously with a word you won’t find in Max’s limited vocabulary: boredom.

It starts in typical Mad Max fashion: Someone steals your car. That someone is Scabrous Scrotus, the grossly named son of Immortan Joe (the main bad guy from Fury Road). Scrotus rules the city of Gas Town — and by extension, the entire Wasteland — so getting even is going to take some doing.

Specifically, it requires a new car, the Magnum Opus, which Max sets about piecing together with the help of a grossly named humpbacked mechanic, Chumbucket. The apocalypse didn’t leave too many Autozone stores standing, so Max does what any star of an open-world action game does: runs errands for literally anyone who asks in an attempt to upgrade his way to salvation.

Mad Max tries to take advantage of the sandbox by layering systems on top of systems. You can roam freely, hunting down the game’s main currency, Scrap, to buff your car or Max’s skills. You can complete challenges to score Legend points, which further upgrade Max via meetings with a mystical psychotherapist named Griffa. You can play helper bee by building up various friendly Strongholds, turning them into handy hubs for restocking fuel, ammo, and life-sustaining water. Occasionally, you may actually bother with a story mission or two.

It’s exhaustive and initially intoxicating. Mad Max does a marvelous job establishing its desolate, grim world. You spend a great deal of time rumbling across the hard desert plains, washed out and burned to a crisp under the unrelenting sun. You’ll charge into some rogue War Boys or bandits, bashing their cars with yours until they erupt in an epic fireball, pouring thick black smoke into the hazy air. Despite its ugliness, Mad Max is, at times, a very beautiful game.

It’s just an unfocused one. Each of the game’s several massive, look-alike desert regions holds a handful of hot air balloons. These are the Mad Max versions of Assassin’s Creed viewpoints; float to the top and you’ll open up a wealth of locations to scavenge, towering metal scarecrows to tear down, oil rigs and enemy bases to infiltrate and secure, roving convoys to disrupt, and more. By the midway point, you’re staring at a map so cluttered with icons that finding whatever you’re looking for is like picking out Waldo.

I recognize that this is part and parcel of open-world game design, but where Mad Max stumbles is in its monotony. The first few times you sack an enemy camp are thrilling; by the fifth time, you’re just ticking off boxes until the thing is yours. The stark desert environment, initially so fresh amid the throngs of lush fantasy games lining shelves, renders every location close to identical. Each base and tower and oil rig is just a riff off of the last one. Were it not for the handy Grand Theft Auto navigational lines telling you exactly where to go, you would constantly be lost in a sea of brown and orange. No wonder Max is going crazy.

He’s also a man of few words, chatting briefly with the bizarre cast of scarred quest givers before hopping into his ride and thundering back into the abyss. The over-the-top characters look insane but rarely show depth; you won’t connect with anyone beyond Chumbucket, who can’t seem to shut up. Story and character development tend to take a backseat to world building in the films as well, but those only last two hours apiece. The Mad Max game stretches out to 30 or 40, and most of that is spent monotonously running side missions until you feel sufficiently badass (or bored) to actually pick up the trail of the plot again. While there is no shortage of stuff to do, the game has trouble establishing the addictive, completionist rhythm that draws players into the best open-world games.

But it certainly has its moments. Lifted pretty much straight out of Batman, the game’s weighty, satisfying melee combat is a bright spot. Max has severely limited ammo for his shotgun, so most fights turn into street brawls. Max swings for the fences; great animations really sell the ugly truth of up-close, survivalist hand-to-hand combat.

Problematically, Max runs pretty slowly, making on-foot navigation outside of bases or Strongholds pretty much useless. He can’t jump more than a few inches vertically, so exploring, say, a curious mountainous outcropping is a no-go. Max also weirdly can’t hold melee weapons for long, dumping them the moment he hops into his car or picks up some Scrap, and breaking them a few strikes into a fight. In a world where a can of dog food is considered a luxury item, I can’t fathom why Max so flippantly discards spiked baseball bats.

(Image: Warner Bros. Interactive)

Even picking up Scrap is a pain, as it requires holding down X (in the PS4 version). You do this every time, including after you’ve trashed some cars. That means pulling over, getting out, and bending down to pick up every bit of Scrap. You can eventually upgrade your way out of this a bit, but it takes forever. Maybe just let me collect currency by running over it?

These control issues are relieved when you get into your car. Though at first the Magnum Opus drives with the precision and power of a neighborhood go-kart, you can and will upgrade it into a potent post-apocalyptic wrecking ball. Mad Max is at its best when it lets you drive into things, which you will do often. You’ll harpoon enemy drivers straight out of their cars, T-bone unsuspecting wastelanders, and even lob the grossly named Thunderpoons (those exploding spears from the movie) at anything unlucky enough to get close.

When it all comes together organically, Mad Max is genuinely fun. During one sequence, I was being battered to bits by two War Boys rampaging about in nasty, spiked machines. I rolled out of my flaming wreck, then barely dove out of the way of a War Boy trying to run me down. I turned, aimed with my rarely used shotgun, and blew up the fuel tank on the back of his car. Up in flames it went, igniting the second car and yielding a majestic, fiery fountain of car parts. Eat your heart out, Tom Hardy.

But just as it is impossible to play this game without thinking about Fury Road, it is also impossible not to think of the way better open-world games solve its niggling issues. Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max’s most obvious influence, saved itself from monotony with its innovative Nemesis mechanic. Batman: Arkham Knight provided multiple means of transport, turning its densely packed city into a thrilling navigational playground.

Mad Max doesn’t really offer anything new here. While the mix of auto and on-foot action creates moments of legitimate sandbox joy, its repetitive, grinding missions make it more tedious than it ought to be. Perhaps that’s the point — it’s a hard world out there, after all — but like Max, sometimes we’re just looking for a smoother ride.

What’s Hot: Fire, obviously; brawny melee combat; gorgeous, gritty look; plenty to do

What’s Not: Thin story; grows repetitive; derivative; odd control choices

Ben Silverman plays too many video games. He’s right here on Twitter.