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Mad Max: Review Thread.

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image courtesy of timmyp53.


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"Those modest satisfactions are not worth the time it takes to complete the journey. It begins with a series of dull multi-minute cutscenes—before the menu, then after you press start, then the opening credits, then some more narration—involving an antagonist known as Lord Scrotus. (A silly name, yes, but this is a movie franchise with a character who goes by the Doof Warrior.) Things go downhill from there. One of the very first missions is to run about 20 feet so that you can watch another cutscene
This Gen Gaming: 6.5
Mad Max isn’t going to be a game I call a must buy on release date or even something you must play. It’s defiantly worth giving a try because it can be quite fun to play at times. I liked the customization features for both Max and the cars, and I thought the game managed to be familiar but have a unique take on different things like combat for example. Although my thoughts of the game started strong, they dropped more and more as I advanced through the game. I’d say for now to hold off on your purchase until it drops in price.
Readers Gambit: 7.5
Mad Max will feel extremely familiar if you are a fan of the action-adventure genre. The map is expansive and strewn with shipwrecks, camps, and caves to investigate in search of salvage to upgrade Max, the Magnum Opus, and to help recreate areas of the wasteland. Although Mad Max’s approach to traversing these plains is on a completely different level. Mad Max truly shines is in the combat. The free flow combat system is something many players will be familiar with through its inclusion in Rocksteady’s Batman games, but where Mad Max differs is in the execution. Max is an unhinged brawler and his fighting style reflects that. Unlike Batman Max’s moves are unrefined and a blend of whatever feels good and the fastest way to inflict as much damage as possible. This includes clotheslines, Spartan kicks, agonising slams in to the ground that all feel unbelievably satisfying as you see dazed enemies lie before you. There are even extremely brutal shiv finishers Max can utilise when he has a knife, although instead of retrieving it he leaves it in the body, which is rather frustrating in a game in which resources are extremely scarce.

IGN - 8.4
Mad Max is a juxtaposition of exciting, thrilling fun set in a world of disgusting, primal depravity – like a singing telegram informing you of a death in the family, or an ice-cream cake with your terminal test results written in frosting. It’s a conflicting place of despair, a personal playground of explosive action and compulsive, unending progression that I can’t wait to get back to, and one hell of a ride.
GameSpot - 6
Mad Max's world in the game is beautiful, grim, and fascinating. Some interesting characters, impressive environments and great car combat draw you in and incentivise you to keep going, but it's when you get out of the car that things fall apart. Mad Max's combat system is too dumbed down to enjoy, and repetitive activities such as searching for scrap and invading small enemy camps gets old fast. Mad Max offers some great experiences, but for a game that tries to impose the realities of survival on you, it does a poor job of following up on this pressure. Mad Max is too focused on providing you with an open-world that's filled with missions, and not focused enough on making those missions worth your time.
Game Informer - 7.5
At the end of the day, Max overtook some bases, ran a couple hundred cars off the road, met some forgettable characters, and buried his fist into the sunburnt skin of the villainous locals. Was it worth the effort? That ultimately depends on how much fun you had in performing these basic, repetitious open-world activities.
GamesRadar - 8
It’s this scale that’s both Mad Max’s greatest strength and, to a lesser degree, its weakness. There’s a good game here eventually, but one that takes some time to find itself. Early on it’s all a bit directionless with such an arbitrary overall objective: you’re trying to make your car better by completing missions to… um, make your car better. With such a woolly heading, the first 4-5 hours are a formless muddle lost in the wealth of things to do, making it easy to get lost or find yourself in trouble above your level.
Polygon - 5
Those inevitable wins felt empty, and that's really the biggest problem with Mad Max. The film franchise has always transcended the summer blockbuster genre, providing worlds and characters and scenarios that have stuck in my mind. Mad Max the game is the opposite; it's got chase scenes and big explosions and bloody fights, but nothing to remember it for. In spite of some annoying technical issues and questionable design, Mad Max is functional, but it's fluff, plain and simple.
God is a Geek - 7.5
Mad Max is a fun game. You’ll happily lose an hour or two here and there, and feel great about it Nobody quite does that open-world charm like Avalanche, and the harpoon never stops being a source of mirth. The combat is great, and if you’re after an open world third-person title, you could do a lot worse.
Hobby Consolas - 9
Despite being conventional, the mixture of genres, the wealth of content it offers and excellent level design are culplables to keep us hooked for weeks.
Gamer.no 910 (Norwegian site)
Eurogamer: Recommended http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-09-01-mad-max-review
Avalanche wears the fiction so well it's hard not to be charmed by this brutal, beautiful open world

3DJuegos - 75

url=http://www.vandal.net/analisis/ps4/mad-max/21343]Vandal - 80



Meristation - 78[/QUOTE]

Metacritic: 71

Let it be known:

I have no problems with people wanting to wait for more reviews. Further, I have no problem if anyone wants to take these reviews to task for any specific points made. But as with any review thread I peruse, I want to caution against this kind of posting. I promise you that it's not productive.


Edit: reviews updates from later post since OP wasn't here:

Edit: ^Thanks.

Why no updates in the OP? Reviews are up son

IGN - 8.4

GameSpot - 6

Game Informer - 7.5

GamesRadar - 8

Polygon - 5

God is a Geek - 7.5

Hobby Consolas - 9

OP is a stan accidentally making the game look worse

giphy.gif
 

enigmatic_alex44

Whenever a game uses "middleware," I expect mediocrity. Just see how poor TLOU looks.
Oof. About the range I expected.

I'll stick to the Fury Road Blu ray on Tuesday.
 
This will probably be make or break time for me. I'm semi interested/semi not interested so I'll be able to tell if I should prioritize it over some other games I want to play.

I at least hope Fury Road's soundtrack is in it.

But sadly it looks to be

sGnB5iG.gif
 

Bizzquik

Member
From the Reader's Gambit review:
"Ultimately Mad Max isn’t the worst game in the world, but it isn’t the best either."

I'm glad there are some reviews starting to come out....but that none-sentence above is utterly meaningless & trite.
 

BiggNife

Member
Not really convinced by two scores from sites I've never heard of. Will wait for more reviews to come in before I decide if I'm gonna get it.
 

Lumination

'enry 'ollins
I'd love to eat crow more than anyone, but nothing about this game felt like much more than a next-gen movie cop-off. Not sure what all the hype here was about.
 
WB surprised me with Shadow of Mordor, but it doesn't seem like that will be the case here.
No idea what they were thinking releasing this alongside MGSV and so far away from the movie
 

Betty

Banned
BAH! But oh well, at least I won't feel I'm missing out while playing Phantom Pain.

If it had release earlier, regardless of review's, i'd have bought it.
 
The previews for this game remind me a ton of SoM. I wonder why the differences in scores?
Shadow of Mordor came out when there was literally nothing else. It was a weird ass barren no man's land after The Last of Us Remastered but before Destiny. It was alone, there was nothing else to play, it was still relatively early in the PS4/X1 gen. I feel like all of these factors led it to get slightly inflated review scores + hype.

This game doesn't have any of those factors helping it, so it's kind of just being reviewed as is (I would assume).
 
WB surprised me with Shadow of Mordor, but it doesn't seem like that will be the case here.
No idea what they were thinking releasing this alongside MGSV and so far away from the movie

Well presumably they delayed it away from the movie on the basis of quality (plus holiday rush helps) but releasing it the same day as MGSV seems like a bit of a misstep, next week might have been better?
 

hey_it's_that_dog

benevolent sexism
What the fuck kind of stupid name is "this gen gaming" and why can't they spell "definitely" correctly?

Also the rest of the excerpt reads like a half-assed forum post. But I guess it's an Official Gaming Review Blog™ so let's take their opinion seriously with a number and everything!
 

enigmatic_alex44

Whenever a game uses "middleware," I expect mediocrity. Just see how poor TLOU looks.
LOL why are y'all so mad? 😂 Has there EVER been a good game based on a movie? I saw these bad reviews coming a mile away.
 

Zabuza

Banned
Awful reviewers. Everyone, wait until someone with at least some semblance of credibility reviews this before shouting out negative comments about the game.
 
Shadow of Mordor came out when there was literally nothing else. It was a weird ass barren no man's land after The Last of Us Remastered but before Destiny. It was alone, there was nothing else to play, it was still relatively early in the PS4/X1 gen. I feel like all of these factors led it to get slightly inflated review scores + hype.

This game doesn't have any of those factors helping it, so it's kind of just being reviewed as is (I would assume).

You make really good points. Mordor was an awesome game and one of my favorites last year. I'm anticipating Mad Max just as much as I was Mordor last year, which was a lot.

Plus the story and missions were pretty... not great in Mordor, but it was real fun to play and control. If the same goes for Mad Max then I'll be happy for sure.
 
From the Reader's Gambit review:
"Ultimately Mad Max isn’t the worst game in the world, but it isn’t the best either."

I'm glad there are some reviews starting to come out....but that none-sentence above is utterly meaningless & trite.



What the fuck does that even mean? Are we only buying the best games of all time now? Shit, i better send Phantom Pain back, because reviews aren't perfect.
 
Fair or unfair, that movie set very high expectations for this. I wonder what pressure Avalanche has been under to deliver something worthy of those expectations.

Still hoping that while it may be a mid-range title, that it could at least offer up some real variety. That's my hope anyway, because the footage I've seen looked a bit samey, and the batman combat looks out of place.
 
Who the fuck are these reviewers?

I dunno. But it's the only ones floating around right now.

Fair or unfair, that movie set very high expectations for this. I wonder what pressure Avalanche has been under to deliver something worthy of those expectations.

Still hoping that while it may be a mid-range title, that it could at least offer up some real variety. That's my hope anyway, because the footage I've seen looked a bit samey, and the batman combat looks out of place.

My understanding is that they actually had a major shift in color and tone because of the movie.
 
Who the fuck are these reviewers?
The sort willing to break embargo for early page views? That said, neither seems that hyperbolic. They're middling reviews, not total clickbait.

Overall, seems about what I expected. An average licenced game that could've been noteworthy if released on literally any other Tuesday.
 
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