Mad Max is an interesting game in some ways. Mechanically, it's very simple. The best analogy I could come up for it was that it was a ten hour game stretched out over a sixty hour world. The world is great. The level design is really good. The variations they work out with a palette of various wasteland items and detritus is genuinely clever, especially in light of how few ways there are to interact with the environment or traverse areas. You end up with these elaborate underground caves that are visually complex, but easy to navigate. There's always the end level shortcut to loop you around to the beginning at the end.
The landscapes are gorgeous from just about any angle, and despite what some folks say or screenshots lead you to believe, fairly varied between areas. It's still all wasteland. But! You go from the dried out husk of the ocean floor to fairly mountainous regions with some different flavors of arid post apocalypse in between. I think I like the underwater volcano area the best, it's the most otherworldly and menacing from a distance. The large shallow lakes of oil sludge are something too.
Apparently, the game was delayed and retooled in a major way during development. I think the original release date was some time in 2014, and it only came out late last year. You can sort of get an idea of what was taken out--There's a weird, half hearted emphasis on driving enemy cars and how they "disguise" you from factions. I get the impression you originally weren't supposed to have your own permanent, always summonable, self-repairing car but they ultimately couldn't find a way to make the game any fun without it. You'd probably constantly find yourself on foot in the middle of nowhere, or driving something you hated because it would constantly blow up. It wouldn't be fun to get out to repair it, or to fast travel to a base to get something better, or...etc. Maybe there was stunt highjacking but it was too similar to the Just Cause games? I'm also guessing they had ambitions for some sort of factional warfare. Funny how that kind of stuff gets cut out of games fairly often.
Also interestingly, or not, is that the playable map is only about a quarter of the size of the generated map. And you can functionally drive forever once you fly off the edge of that. Or near enough, I got bored after about fifteen minutes. Between the level design and the massive size of the world, I suspect Avalanche has some really impressive game development tools. I'm kinda surprised at the lack of interest in modding this to the same degree the Just Cause games have generated, since they're using variations of the same engine. A modding kit for a game like this could be really, really amazing. Maybe too amazing? I imagine making your own full conversion wouldn't be out of the question. I wonder how that kind of proposal sounds to the business side of a game development studio. Apparently the long tail on Skyrim sales just isn't that compelling? Too much opportunity cost? Actually, now that I think of it, licensing probably rules anything like that right out. Maybe for an original IP. Like some sort of Steam Punk Open World Vehicle game. Supposedly that's what the
first screenshot for this game actually was--a scrapped prototype of some Steam Punk themed game.
Anyway. That was longer and more rambling than I intended. But I'm a little too tired to edit it into something more succinct and cohesive, so I hope someone found it interesting as is.
