January Assassination #1 (SG Win)
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Mad Max is the power fantasy you didn't know you wanted. It's a game that knows it's theme really well, and digs deep on it, with every gameplay element contributing to the universe the devs want to invoke.
It's a visually striking game. I ended up having to lower the specs to make it run on my machine so textures up close looked a bit mid, but I imagine that with a proper rig it looks gorgeous. But what really struck me were the environments and the effects. Night and day, explosions, sand storms, dust clouds, floating particles bathed by lightrays inside buildings, it all looks amazing, and the landscape is wide, expansive, desolate, and peppered with points of interest that catch your attention such as the ever-present Gastown, lighthouses, broken ship hulls, massive walls and jagged peaks. Driving around is a feast for the eyes, and it's clear that art direction here was very strong. The audio is also really good, with special emphasis for the two things that matter the most - the sound of a V8 engine purring, and the sound of a strong whack landing on someone's cracked skull. The game can get quiet at times, but it kind of adds to the desolate atmosphere, and is not a flaw in any sense.
The plot carries you along the story quite nicely. The game relies a lot on cinematics, including some action sequences that I believe would work better if you were the one doing the actions instead of watching them being done via cinematics, but it's fine. One of the flaws of the game for me was that the cinematics usually dragged, and I felt they were overused, but overall they are effective in creating the vibes of the game, exploring Max's inner psyche, and driving the game forward. There is a lot, and I really mean a lot of side content here, but very little of it is strictly necessary to progress. I imagine most people do some of the side missions to unlock better gear for Max or for their car, otherwise story missions can get quite difficult, but leave most of the side-content for the post-game, which is good. Although a lot of it is repetitive (defeate X convoys, destroy X scarecrows), the camp takeovers actually never got old and I enjoyed doing them to the very end.
The meat of the game is the gameplay, and it's solid here as well. You'll mostly be doing one of three things - driving, exploring, or brawling. Driving doesn't feel that great for me, I thought the handling was very slippery and car combat is somewhat simplified, not leaving you a lot of options to engage enemies. Make me miss Twisted Metal 3 or Vigilant 8 on the PSX hehe. Driving aimlessly around the expanses of the world is much more enjoyable than combat driving, but it kind of works. I dread and hate the Desert Races and haven't done many of them, and it's probably the one thing that will prevent me from getting all the achievements for this game.
Exploration, on the other hand, is a treat. Learning more about the world, be it from environmental storytelling or from in-game lore, item descriptions and Max's comments on story relics is verey effective worldbuilding, and I loved side-missions that took me to abandoned subway stations or airports, for instance. This world we inhabit sucks to be in, and helps to explain how Max became Mad Max. Interacting with NPC's is also great, I love Jeet and Scab and Deep Friah and all those guys. They fit perfectly into the world and are really well developed and voiced.
Finally, brawling is Batman's Arkham games improved in my opinion. You're not as effective as Batman in evasion, but it's a bit easier to react to enemies advances and to manage crowds. Where in Batman I could hardly connect combos, getting a 20+ wasn't super difficult. Overcoming a mob of 15 guys with melee weapons rushing you always feels great, and I just wish you didn't have to fight the camera as well as the enemies that often.
Overall, incredible game, I enjoyed my time with it so far and will keep coming back to it to liberate the rest of the wasteland and gather all the scrap I can!