I had heard that Mad Max could be a bit boring of a game but when I got it on sale for $6CAD I figured I would give it a go. It was a good choice. I do tend to get bored in open world games sometimes but the combat and story of Mad Max kept me entertained. There were a few quirks along the way but nothing gamebreaking. The graphics were solid, the game was stable, the combat was great and the story fit the lore.
The gameplay was a mesh of the Batman games from Rocksteady and Sleeping Dogs. It mixed the timing based combat of the Batman games with the brutality from Sleeping Dogs. It felt very at home with the Mad Max series as it was very low tech but brutal. You could use shivs, various finishers such as breaking bones and necks, melee weapons and go into fury mode which aside from extra damage has it’s own selection of finishers. I wished you had more control over which finisher was used as sometimes they would repeat a lot but that’s a minor gripe. The car combat was pretty decently done but felt clunky at times. There were a good variety of weapons to use from the car but aiming them just felt off sometimes. I could be right next to an enemy but not have the option to shoot for their tires but move a little away or back and suddenly I could even though I should have had a clear shot before. The car damage was a mixed bag as well. I could run head on into a rock and half my car’s health could be gone or get t-boned by an enemy and same thing but I could then go and boost off a cliff, flip over a half dozen times and land without a scratch or dent to my car’s health. One more thing is that the lack of a jump ability was really poorly thought out. I literally couldn’t get to some loot because the game wouldn’t allow me to walk on a few surfaces to get to it. Had I been able to jump there would be no issue. I wish the map would tell me which areas were locked because sometimes I travelled all the way to a loot location only to be told this area was locked to a story quest which means I wasted my time going there.
The graphics were overall above average but not stunning. I can’t point to one thing and say it was bad but I also can’t point to one detail that really stunned me. You know the feeling of seeing water or foilage in Crysis the first time or seeing the world of Oblivion after exiting the dungeon after the intro or the fire damage to the landscape in Far Cry 2, etc. I could go on but basically the graphics were good and better than some but nothing stood out about them. It may be tough to make a desert wasteland look gorgeous but either way they didn’t. One thing I will say though is the storms were very well done. Lightning strikes going off everywhere, debris blowing everywhere, made for a sight and was tense.
As I mentioned earlier the game was stable for me on Linux. On Windows I would get a crash every 10 minutes or so due to a “directX error”. On Linux I had one single solitary crash and that was it. On Linux it had a Vulkan beta as wel as the standard OpenGL version. The Vulkan version offered me more stable framerates, less valleys and peaks than OpenGL. Both were good though as I averaged over 80 FPS with the game maxed out. That being said when I was around two specific areas, Deep Friah’s stronghold and Gastown, I would get random drops to 20-30 FPS even with nothing going on at all. No combat, car chases, just me walking around. I am not sure of the cause but it happened on both OpenGL and Vulkan. The game was only using 26% of my CPU and between 3-3.5GB of RAM so those weren’t the cause of my slowdowns. As for graphics options there were plenty. There were toggles for Vsync and motion blur, 8 different levels for AF, 1 level for SSAO and AA as well as 13 other options all with various levels. There was no way to turn depth of field off though, I could only lower it. While there was no option in the menu for 144Hz the game did allow me to go up to 144hz with Vsync. I beat the story in 52 hours and completed 78% of the game overall. I played on version 1.1 of the game. The game lacked manual saves but it did save after every event whether it was collecting loot, doing an upgrade or completing a mission so it wasn’t a big deal.
I enjoyed my time with Mad Max. It had it’s quirks and issues but overall the story was good and the combat was good so those are two big wins right there. I would easily recommend it to those who enjoy open world games or the timing based combat of the Batman games. There are better games out there but there are far worse as well. I paid $6 CAD for it but would easily say it is worth $30 CAD.
My score: 7.5/10
My system:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.3.3 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro Mate | Kernel 4.20.10-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P @1920*1080 144Hz