Azurephile gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Azurephile gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Mad Max isn’t new, the first movie came out the same year I was born (1979). The second came out two years later. There is a third, too, which came out in 2015, titled Mad Max: Fury Road. Tom Hardy plays Max in that movie. I think it’s interesting, he doesn’t speak much, but when he does he kind of grunts. The movie also has the creepiest villain I have ever seen!
The game also came out in 2015. I missed a great opportunity to get it for free as one of my tribe mates from Ark offered to give me a key, but I didn’t take him up on the offer. I kind of regret that, but I actually ended up getting it for $4 recently. I really have no idea how or why I was able to get it for that price, it’s definitely worth more than that. Steam is telling me I spent about 81 hours playing it, which to me is a great amount of time for a game (I love long lasting games so long as they’re fun). I completed almost everything, except for the races.
Mad Max is an open world game based in a dystopian world, sort of like Fallout. I don’t exactly have the details about what happened to the world, but the game does drop some hints. I’m pretty sure I saw some where in the game that it had to do with global warming. This made me think that creating such a world that was pretty much desolated by global warming might be a great way to help teach people about global warming and what the planet might look like if we don’t take action now.
Max and his car are inseparable, although it was stolen from him at the beginning of the game. Not long after the beginning, you meet Chumbucket. He’s a “black finger,” which in this world means he’s a really good mechanic. He’s also turned mechanics into a religion. He calls Max “Saint.” You’ll also meet a dog, which becomes really helpful later in detecting mines. Chumbucket works with Max, helping him build a new car. You have to go searching for different parts including the engine, body, and weapons. Probably my favorite weapon is the harpoon. It not only allows you to pull down things like gates, but it also allows you to pull tires off of an enemy car. I also enjoyed targeting snipers and pulling them off of their perches. Many times while playing I told myself, “I will not tolerate snipers!” There’s also an explosive that you can throw. You can also use your shotgun, which is extremely helpful. It becomes nearly vital when an enemy has pretty much destroyed Max’s car so much that Max has to wait outside of it for Chumbucket to repair it. While on foot, enemies will try to run over you, but you can evade them and then turn around and shoot their fuel tanks (these are almost always exposed, providing Max with an easy target). You can also shoot their tires, which will make them stop and exit their vehicles. Then they’ll come to fight you, which I find is a much easier way to deal with them than ramming them with the car (this way your car won’t take damage). Just shooting out a tire on one vehicle will prompt the other drivers to exit their vehicles as well (enemies usually come in groups of three vehicles).
As you progress, you’ll be able to upgrade the car’s various parts, some of which I already mentioned. These upgrades include things like the engine, tires, weapons, exhaust, paint, and more. As much as I liked one of the cool multi-colored body paints, I ended up sticking with the one that’s actually useful. There’s one that has a primer that’s resistant to fire. This can be important as some vehicles can spit fire out the back, some can also shoot fire out the sides. Your car can also do the latter action, but it consumes gas.
Not only can you upgrade the car, but you can also upgrade Max. You can upgrade his shotgun, the clothes he wears (which can provide armor) and the things he can put on his hands to increase his melee damage. Speaking of melee combat, the system is very much like the Batman: Arkham games, so for me, as a fan of those games, this combat system was greatly welcome. It’s pretty simple, really. You press one button to attack, another to counter, and another to evade. You can also pick up melee weapons, but they’ll break eventually. You also carry an amount of shivs and you’ll see opportunities to use them. Max also has other abilities you can upgrade, which will allow him to do things such as not just counter an attack, but if you counter an enemy who’s swinging a melee weapon at you, you can take it from them. You can also counter an attack with a shiv and turn it on the attacker. These abilities are fun.
I think the world of the game is quite similar to Far Cry games, although my experience with Far Cry is limited to Far Cry Primal. However, this game really makes me want to play those other games, so I’m keeping my eye out for a good discount for them on Steam. As such there are plenty of things to do. There are many areas of the world and you won’t know what’s in them until you go to one of the many hot air balloon stations littered across the land. When you find one, just keep holding the ascend button. Eventually you’ll get high enough and the game will take over telling you pretty much that you discovered the area. Then it will allow you to use your binoculars, which lets you look around the area and the game will mark the things on the map you discover while looking around.
Each area has a threat level and there are many ways to reduce it, which will reduce the amount of enemies that are scouting the area, though they’ll never completely disappear. One of the things you can do to reduce the threat level include disarming mines in a minefield (each area seems to have two minefields). There are also these kind of statue structures that you can tear down with the harpoon. There are also various types of camps for you to conquer. One such example is a place where you have to destroy oil pumps. These areas have enemies in them. Each one has a difficulty level. When you look at a camp, it’ll tell you your objective and what that difficulty level is. Although, for me the difficulty level was mostly irrelevant as they were all not bad. Some of them have bosses you have to defeat. Usually all you can do against them is evade their attacks and then attack them while they’re recovering from swinging their huge weapons.
Scrap is the currency in the game and there are different ways you can get it. Scrap is used to purchase upgrades. There are places on the map you can go, called savaging locations. There will be a certain amount of scrap items for you to collect, but there are other things called history relics. These are pretty are photos and they usually have something written on the back of them, which gives the world some lore. Max will often also comment on these once you read that text. Once you collect all the collectibles in the location, the marker on the map will disappear. However, if there is a water source in the location, that will be remain marked on the map.
Speaking of water, water and food is the way to restore Max’s health. Water is more abundant. He has a canteen and there are a couple of different sources for water, usually tanks or a toilet, for you to refill your canteen. One of the things you can upgrade for Max is how much water he gets out of a source. The max you can get is 100% more. So, at first, I think it’s a 1:1 ratio, so if a source is only half full, your empty canteen can only be refilled by the same amount. But, if you max out that upgrade, it doesn’t really matter how much water is in a source, because you’ll still acquire more of it. So, if a source is only half full and your canteen is empty, you’ll probably be able to easily fill up your canteen. As for food, there are maggots, which you can find on some dead bodies. There are also cans of dog food for you to eat. There are also living rats, which you’ll hear. You can chase them down and press a button to kill them, then eat them. Yeah, it’s disgusting, but it tells you the state of the world.
There are a few different strongholds. There are missions that the leader in the stronghold will give you, but the strongholds also have projects. You can find pieces of these projects in those scrap locations I mentioned. When you find enough pieces, you can return to the stronghold to build it. Almost all of these projects are useful, except for the scrap one, because it’s supposed to collect scrap for you while you’re offline, but the online features of the game are no longer available. However, you can find other more useful projects such as the maggot farm, water tank, oil tank, and armorer. After building these, you’ll be able to return to the stronghold to refill your health, water, gas, and ammo. However, you can’t just collect these any time you want. Once you collect them, you’ll have to wait a certain amount of time before they’re available again. The game will tell you how much time remains that you’ll have to wait. However, if you have multiple stongholds unlocked, you can visit different ones to get what you need. So, if the refills aren’t available in one stonghold due to time, you can just visit another.
Fast travel is a feature in the game. There are multiple places you can fast travel too, including those hot air balloon stations and strongholds I mentioned. You’ll also be able to fast travel to the various places for races. During a race here’s a finish time you want to get so that you can be rewarded. One of the rewards you can get are certain tokens, although this is not the only way to acquire these tokens. They allow you to get upgrades for Max, like the one I mentioned where you can upgrade how much water you get from a source. Once you get a token, someone will appear on the map (and the game will tell you this and show you where he is). You’ll have to visit him to get the upgrade. He’s kind of a mystic. He’s mysterious and seems to know Max and is trying to help him get back to who he used to be. Max used to be kind of like a police officer that would chase down criminals, but after the events of the first movie, he’s gone “mad.”
The story was pretty cool. The music wasn’t particularly noteworthy though. Still, I really enjoyed the game. I did everything except all the races, because I found them to be way too frustrating. Just like in the game, enemy cars will try to ram you or destroy you by other means. When you join a race, you have a very limited amount of vehicles to choose from (max amount is four). So, you can’t use your own car. If you win a race with one of the available vehicles, they’ll become available for you to use outside the race. While in a stronghold, you can choose a different vehicle to drive, which is handy, because if you want to disarm minefields, you’ll have to use Chumbucket’s Buggy, which the dog is in. Don’t worry much though, this buggy seems to have really good armor and it’s fast, though the only weapon you’ll have available is your shotgun. Oh and I should also mention that one of the upgrades you can get is the ability to make it so that Chumbucket repairs the car you’re using faster, this is kind of important as you’ll notice it takes too long to do so without these upgrades.
Overall, I think it’s a good game and I think it’s worthy of a full positive Cheerful Ghost rating. If you like open world games, then this one is probably something you’ll be interested in. Check out the embedded "Before You Buy" video to get a good look and review of it.
Let me know what you think of this. Let me know also if you’ve seen any of the movies and what you thought of them.
The game also came out in 2015. I missed a great opportunity to get it for free as one of my tribe mates from Ark offered to give me a key, but I didn’t take him up on the offer. I kind of regret that, but I actually ended up getting it for $4 recently. I really have no idea how or why I was able to get it for that price, it’s definitely worth more than that. Steam is telling me I spent about 81 hours playing it, which to me is a great amount of time for a game (I love long lasting games so long as they’re fun). I completed almost everything, except for the races.
Mad Max is an open world game based in a dystopian world, sort of like Fallout. I don’t exactly have the details about what happened to the world, but the game does drop some hints. I’m pretty sure I saw some where in the game that it had to do with global warming. This made me think that creating such a world that was pretty much desolated by global warming might be a great way to help teach people about global warming and what the planet might look like if we don’t take action now.
Max and his car are inseparable, although it was stolen from him at the beginning of the game. Not long after the beginning, you meet Chumbucket. He’s a “black finger,” which in this world means he’s a really good mechanic. He’s also turned mechanics into a religion. He calls Max “Saint.” You’ll also meet a dog, which becomes really helpful later in detecting mines. Chumbucket works with Max, helping him build a new car. You have to go searching for different parts including the engine, body, and weapons. Probably my favorite weapon is the harpoon. It not only allows you to pull down things like gates, but it also allows you to pull tires off of an enemy car. I also enjoyed targeting snipers and pulling them off of their perches. Many times while playing I told myself, “I will not tolerate snipers!” There’s also an explosive that you can throw. You can also use your shotgun, which is extremely helpful. It becomes nearly vital when an enemy has pretty much destroyed Max’s car so much that Max has to wait outside of it for Chumbucket to repair it. While on foot, enemies will try to run over you, but you can evade them and then turn around and shoot their fuel tanks (these are almost always exposed, providing Max with an easy target). You can also shoot their tires, which will make them stop and exit their vehicles. Then they’ll come to fight you, which I find is a much easier way to deal with them than ramming them with the car (this way your car won’t take damage). Just shooting out a tire on one vehicle will prompt the other drivers to exit their vehicles as well (enemies usually come in groups of three vehicles).
As you progress, you’ll be able to upgrade the car’s various parts, some of which I already mentioned. These upgrades include things like the engine, tires, weapons, exhaust, paint, and more. As much as I liked one of the cool multi-colored body paints, I ended up sticking with the one that’s actually useful. There’s one that has a primer that’s resistant to fire. This can be important as some vehicles can spit fire out the back, some can also shoot fire out the sides. Your car can also do the latter action, but it consumes gas.
Not only can you upgrade the car, but you can also upgrade Max. You can upgrade his shotgun, the clothes he wears (which can provide armor) and the things he can put on his hands to increase his melee damage. Speaking of melee combat, the system is very much like the Batman: Arkham games, so for me, as a fan of those games, this combat system was greatly welcome. It’s pretty simple, really. You press one button to attack, another to counter, and another to evade. You can also pick up melee weapons, but they’ll break eventually. You also carry an amount of shivs and you’ll see opportunities to use them. Max also has other abilities you can upgrade, which will allow him to do things such as not just counter an attack, but if you counter an enemy who’s swinging a melee weapon at you, you can take it from them. You can also counter an attack with a shiv and turn it on the attacker. These abilities are fun.
I think the world of the game is quite similar to Far Cry games, although my experience with Far Cry is limited to Far Cry Primal. However, this game really makes me want to play those other games, so I’m keeping my eye out for a good discount for them on Steam. As such there are plenty of things to do. There are many areas of the world and you won’t know what’s in them until you go to one of the many hot air balloon stations littered across the land. When you find one, just keep holding the ascend button. Eventually you’ll get high enough and the game will take over telling you pretty much that you discovered the area. Then it will allow you to use your binoculars, which lets you look around the area and the game will mark the things on the map you discover while looking around.
Each area has a threat level and there are many ways to reduce it, which will reduce the amount of enemies that are scouting the area, though they’ll never completely disappear. One of the things you can do to reduce the threat level include disarming mines in a minefield (each area seems to have two minefields). There are also these kind of statue structures that you can tear down with the harpoon. There are also various types of camps for you to conquer. One such example is a place where you have to destroy oil pumps. These areas have enemies in them. Each one has a difficulty level. When you look at a camp, it’ll tell you your objective and what that difficulty level is. Although, for me the difficulty level was mostly irrelevant as they were all not bad. Some of them have bosses you have to defeat. Usually all you can do against them is evade their attacks and then attack them while they’re recovering from swinging their huge weapons.
Scrap is the currency in the game and there are different ways you can get it. Scrap is used to purchase upgrades. There are places on the map you can go, called savaging locations. There will be a certain amount of scrap items for you to collect, but there are other things called history relics. These are pretty are photos and they usually have something written on the back of them, which gives the world some lore. Max will often also comment on these once you read that text. Once you collect all the collectibles in the location, the marker on the map will disappear. However, if there is a water source in the location, that will be remain marked on the map.
Speaking of water, water and food is the way to restore Max’s health. Water is more abundant. He has a canteen and there are a couple of different sources for water, usually tanks or a toilet, for you to refill your canteen. One of the things you can upgrade for Max is how much water he gets out of a source. The max you can get is 100% more. So, at first, I think it’s a 1:1 ratio, so if a source is only half full, your empty canteen can only be refilled by the same amount. But, if you max out that upgrade, it doesn’t really matter how much water is in a source, because you’ll still acquire more of it. So, if a source is only half full and your canteen is empty, you’ll probably be able to easily fill up your canteen. As for food, there are maggots, which you can find on some dead bodies. There are also cans of dog food for you to eat. There are also living rats, which you’ll hear. You can chase them down and press a button to kill them, then eat them. Yeah, it’s disgusting, but it tells you the state of the world.
There are a few different strongholds. There are missions that the leader in the stronghold will give you, but the strongholds also have projects. You can find pieces of these projects in those scrap locations I mentioned. When you find enough pieces, you can return to the stronghold to build it. Almost all of these projects are useful, except for the scrap one, because it’s supposed to collect scrap for you while you’re offline, but the online features of the game are no longer available. However, you can find other more useful projects such as the maggot farm, water tank, oil tank, and armorer. After building these, you’ll be able to return to the stronghold to refill your health, water, gas, and ammo. However, you can’t just collect these any time you want. Once you collect them, you’ll have to wait a certain amount of time before they’re available again. The game will tell you how much time remains that you’ll have to wait. However, if you have multiple stongholds unlocked, you can visit different ones to get what you need. So, if the refills aren’t available in one stonghold due to time, you can just visit another.
Fast travel is a feature in the game. There are multiple places you can fast travel too, including those hot air balloon stations and strongholds I mentioned. You’ll also be able to fast travel to the various places for races. During a race here’s a finish time you want to get so that you can be rewarded. One of the rewards you can get are certain tokens, although this is not the only way to acquire these tokens. They allow you to get upgrades for Max, like the one I mentioned where you can upgrade how much water you get from a source. Once you get a token, someone will appear on the map (and the game will tell you this and show you where he is). You’ll have to visit him to get the upgrade. He’s kind of a mystic. He’s mysterious and seems to know Max and is trying to help him get back to who he used to be. Max used to be kind of like a police officer that would chase down criminals, but after the events of the first movie, he’s gone “mad.”
The story was pretty cool. The music wasn’t particularly noteworthy though. Still, I really enjoyed the game. I did everything except all the races, because I found them to be way too frustrating. Just like in the game, enemy cars will try to ram you or destroy you by other means. When you join a race, you have a very limited amount of vehicles to choose from (max amount is four). So, you can’t use your own car. If you win a race with one of the available vehicles, they’ll become available for you to use outside the race. While in a stronghold, you can choose a different vehicle to drive, which is handy, because if you want to disarm minefields, you’ll have to use Chumbucket’s Buggy, which the dog is in. Don’t worry much though, this buggy seems to have really good armor and it’s fast, though the only weapon you’ll have available is your shotgun. Oh and I should also mention that one of the upgrades you can get is the ability to make it so that Chumbucket repairs the car you’re using faster, this is kind of important as you’ll notice it takes too long to do so without these upgrades.
Overall, I think it’s a good game and I think it’s worthy of a full positive Cheerful Ghost rating. If you like open world games, then this one is probably something you’ll be interested in. Check out the embedded "Before You Buy" video to get a good look and review of it.
Let me know what you think of this. Let me know also if you’ve seen any of the movies and what you thought of them.
