Mad Max - PS4 Game Review.
Posted on: 2015-09-15
Our rating:
This game looks amazing. It somehow combines this destroyed and baron wasteland with beauty - it really feels like I?m there. All the character models are really detailed with great facial animation and they?re really unique.
Mad Max seems like a perfect franchise to turn from film to video games. What could go wrong? All you need is high speed car chases with vehicular combat, hand to hand brawls with bone crunching sounds and an open world wasteland to explore. Does this game tick those boxes? In short yes.
The story of Mad Max is a simple tale of revenge. At the start he is ambushed by some bandits headed by the warlord Scrotus, where they chase Max down, beat him up, take his signature car the Interceptor and leave him for dead in the barren wasteland. He picks himself back up and comes across a small golem like man called Chumbucket who is a master mechanic, so he sets off on an adventure to build a new machine and murder his way to Scrotus and finish him off. The story has a simple yet strong core to give you motivation and it helps that it has great voice work to help you push through the story.
The game takes place in a huge open world for you to explore and it has a lot to do. From taking out bandit camps where you have to take down the top dog to entering races where you can use vehicular combat to take down enemies to win. It has enough to keep you busy for a while and plus you do have to do a certain amount in order to progress because it is essential to upgrade your new car the Magnum Opus. It need it to be tough to go against the stronger cars your encounter later. The game’s currency is scrap which you can find scattered all over the wasteland or if you take over enough camps you’ll get a daily allowance of scrap. The more camps you own the more scrap you’ll earn. I would highly recommend taking over camps as it is the easiest way of earning scrap.
The gameplay as you would expect is mainly driving which splices combat where you use the sawn off shotgun to shoot out the fuel tanks or tyres, plus you have a harpoon gun where you can yank drivers out of their car or take parts of their car with you. You can upgrade the car so it has spikes on the side of the body and on the rims of the wheels which is really fun to shred someone’s tyres at high speed.
You’ll also engage enemies on foot where you’ll get into hand to hand brawls which is immensely satisfying with sound effects. When your fists connect you get that bone crunching action that you would expect in the world of Mad Max. If you’ve played Batman Arkhamn Knight then you’ll be familiar with this hand to hand combat system as you have light hits and hard hits coupled with counters, but Max has a habit of killing his foes compared to Batman as you can use your shotgun in the middle of fights or finish them off with a knife to the head. If you land enough hits Max will go into a berserker mode called “Fury” where he can deal more damage and do brutal finishing moves such as flying drop kicks or picking them up and smashing their heads to the ground.
This game looks amazing. It somehow combines this destroyed and baron wasteland with beauty - it really feels like I’m there. All the character models are really detailed with great facial animation and they’re really unique. I don’t think I found one boring character out of this collection of weirdoes and psychopaths, they are so uniquely designed.
The only negatives I really have and one of them is very big one is that at the point of release I ran into a game breaking bug where I could not progress at all and I had to start the game all over again. I think it has been fixed in a patch but that doesn’t stop it from being very aggravating. In some of the cutscenes the lip syncing went out of place and it looked very bizarre, but this didn’t happen too often.
Mad Max is the true experience that fans will be looking for from the films. With high speed vehicular combat, bone crunching hand to hand action and a rich world to explore with the destroyed yet beautiful wasteland. This is a great game.
4/5
Reviewed by Sam Coles, The Bristolian Gamer, for 365Bristol - the Bristol website where local information matters.
Tags: PS4 Game, Gaming, Console, Mad Max, Review, Playstation.
Article by:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
