Where Mad Max comes into its own is out on the open road. Chumbucket's your constant companion, fixing the car when you're stationary and taking over the wheel when you want to pop into the back and unleash a couple of sniper rounds. Upgrades and unlockable skills take away some of the pain, and there's an angry gratification to be taken from conquering the frustration, though you feel that's only partly by design. The fluid pugilism of Rocksteady's Batman has been appropriated, but the balletic grace has been left back in Gotham here it's more a flurry that can get lost in lurching camera movements and nasty surprises that come barrelling in from off-screen before they can be effectively countered. When using Max's fists, combat that feels outwardly familiar carries a certain clumsiness. Likewise, ammo is hard to come by: Max only ever has a shotgun by his side, and it's rare to have more than one or two shells to take into a fight against a dozen or so enemies. Resources are scarce, be it the dog food and maggots you'll stumble across to top up your health, the water you can carry around in a can to take big, thirsty glugs out of, or the scrap that's required to unlock upgrades for Max and his car. There's a barbarity to the wasteland that's reflected in the systems and in Max himself. Where developer Avalanche Studios has triumphed with Mad Max is in weaving together Miller's cinematic universe and the modern open-world video game with a real sense of purpose. In your travels across the wasteland you'll often see Gas Town, the neon-encrusted, flame-spitting fort where Scrotus is holed up, bubbling away on the horizon, always keeping your objective in focus. Max is the perfect cipher for the tangle of objectives that is the contemporary open-world game, an aimless nomad who floats through people's lives and is now fuelled by something more urgent than seeking revenge for the loss of his wife and child: who's got the keys to his goddamn car? He's more vocal here than we've become accustomed to (and voice actor Bren Foster, as you might expect from someone with a handful episodes of Home & Away on his IMDB page, does a more convincing Australian accent than Tom Hardy mustered in Fury Road), yet there remains something thrillingly primitive about his quest. Performance on console takes a hit at certain points even with the day one patch applied, with the frame-rate plummeting - though it's just about rare enough to never be that much of an issue. In the creeks and crevices of the plains of silence, there's endless busywork to be found. Hot air balloons take the place of Assassin's Creed's viewpoints, the wide vista you acquire marking out hotspots in each region, while Strongholds can be reinforced and fitted with supply units that help keep you stocked up as you work your way through the wastelands to your final mark. Like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and the latter Batman: Arkham games, Mad Max sees Warner Bros funnelling its cinematic property through the open-world template as established by Ubisoft's catalogue: a vast, hostile map being slowly conquered through the capture of camps and the destruction of watch towers. What we're left with is the curious, enjoyable wreckage that comes after a head-on collision between My Summer Car and a post-apocalyptic Assassin's Creed. And so it's up to you and new acquaintance Chumbucket, a deformed, lisping mechanic, to reclaim what's rightfully yours and to build a new set of wheels for yourself in the process. Like its filmic inspiration, its premise is brutal in its simplicity: you're Max Rockatansky, a drifter in the wasteland, and after being pounced upon by Scabrous Scrotus, son of Fury Road's wild-eyed villain Immortan Joe, you're left without your legendary Interceptor car. Warner Bros' open-world action take on Mad Max isn't directly linked to any film in particular, even if it takes many of its cues from the recent Fury Road.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |