I'll start by reiterating what a lot of people have said already...

Mad Max is a pretty decent game. It does a lot of things well, and not a lot of things poorly. It's not the best game I've ever played but it's also far from the worst. It's one of those 7-8/10 games that can get lost amongst the rest.

It uses an open-world formula similar to that of a Ubisoft title with upgrades, things to collect, outposts to take-over, etc.

It is developed by Avalanche Studios who are also responsible for the Just Cause series, RAGE 2, Generation Zero, theHunter and a few others. This means the game benefits from a lot of the tech that studio is known for. It uses one of my favourite game engines: the APEX engine. The environments still look really nice and it's a very well-optimised game meaning you don't need a monster PC to run it smoothly.
Like the Just Cause series, this game has explosions and some pretty neat weather effects. But the explosions and weather effects feel a lot more refined in this game. Quality over quantity, so-to-speak.
There's a pretty neat mechanic which involves a massive storm sweeping over the landscape and engulfing the player if they don't make it back to a safehouse in time. During the storm there's a chance big containers of scrap metal will fly passed you which you can collect, but the storms also have a chance to damage you periodically. This leads to a risk vs reward situation. I think they played pretty safe with the storm mechanic. I would love to see it a bit more fleshed-out as a key part of the game because it very rarely happens and there's a lot of potentially to do something really cool with it especially utilising Avalanche Studio's tech.

The driving feels pretty good. There's a lot of different vehicles and a fair-amount of upgrades to choose from. The vehicle combat is good as well and there's quite a lot of strategy to it, although, I did find it quite frustrating at times especially near the beginning of the game before I had unlocked all of the cool upgrades.

The melee combat is okay. It also suffers from potentially feeling a bit frustrating near the beginning of the game before useful upgrades have bee unlocked.

The driving and vehicle combat + melee combat have to be well implement in this game because the game would suffer tremendously otherwise because there's are integral to the core gameplay-loop. Thankfully they seem to be adequate.

One aspect of the game that really shines IMO is the outpost design. Some of the outposts are really cool in the way they've been made to feel apart of the world. There are outposts built-up into an old oil rig sitting on the dried-up ocean floor, outposts in old rusty container ships, outposts hanging from a bridge, etc. Just really cool designs and where they sit within the wasteland.

The story was fairly standard. Not much going on here, really. I didn't have high expectations and I wasn't too disappointed. Some of the cutscenes and voice-acting was quite well-done, I will say.

I wrote down a list of cons while I was playing the game because I planned to talk about them in the review but looking at my list now, they're really just little nit-picky things like: the camera reset function not working properly on controller, exiting the map screen often causes the character to roll (I've rolled off a lot of cliffs this way D:), some character animations take a bit too long. Small gripes, really.

Overall I would say the game is definitely worth your time and money if you are interested in it. While not being one of the best games out there, it offers a beautiful wasteland to explore and some pretty cool vehicle combat.

I'll start by reiterating what a lot of people have said already... [b]Mad Max is a pretty decent game. It does a lot of things well, and not a lot of things poorly. It's not the best game I've ever played but it's also far from the worst. It's one of those 7-8/10 games that can get lost amongst the rest.[/b] It uses an open-world formula similar to that of a Ubisoft title with upgrades, things to collect, outposts to take-over, etc. It is developed by Avalanche Studios who are also responsible for the Just Cause series, RAGE 2, Generation Zero, theHunter and a few others. This means the game benefits from a lot of the tech that studio is known for. It uses one of my favourite game engines: the APEX engine. The environments still look really nice and it's a very well-optimised game meaning you don't need a monster PC to run it smoothly. Like the Just Cause series, this game has explosions and some pretty neat weather effects. But the explosions and weather effects feel a lot more refined in this game. Quality over quantity, [i]so-to-speak.[/i] There's a pretty neat mechanic which involves a massive storm sweeping over the landscape and engulfing the player if they don't make it back to a safehouse in time. During the storm there's a chance big containers of scrap metal will fly passed you which you can collect, but the storms also have a chance to damage you periodically. This leads to a risk vs reward situation. I think they played pretty safe with the storm mechanic. I would love to see it a bit more fleshed-out as a key part of the game because it very rarely happens and there's a lot of potentially to do something really cool with it especially utilising Avalanche Studio's tech. The driving feels pretty good. There's a lot of different vehicles and a fair-amount of upgrades to choose from. The vehicle combat is good as well and there's quite a lot of strategy to it, although, I did find it quite frustrating at times especially near the beginning of the game before I had unlocked all of the cool upgrades. The melee combat is okay. It also suffers from potentially feeling a bit frustrating near the beginning of the game before useful upgrades have bee unlocked. The driving and vehicle combat + melee combat have to be well implement in this game because the game would suffer tremendously otherwise because there's are integral to the core gameplay-loop. Thankfully they seem to be adequate. One aspect of the game that really shines IMO is the outpost design. Some of the outposts are really cool in the way they've been made to feel apart of the world. There are outposts built-up into an old oil rig sitting on the dried-up ocean floor, outposts in old rusty container ships, outposts hanging from a bridge, etc. Just really cool designs and where they sit within the wasteland. The story was fairly standard. Not much going on here, really. I didn't have high expectations and I wasn't too disappointed. Some of the cutscenes and voice-acting was quite well-done, I will say. I wrote down a list of cons while I was playing the game because I planned to talk about them in the review but looking at my list now, they're really just little nit-picky things like: the camera reset function not working properly on controller, exiting the map screen often causes the character to roll (I've rolled off a lot of cliffs this way D:), some character animations take a bit too long. Small gripes, really. Overall I would say the game is definitely worth your time and money if you are interested in it. While not being one of the best games out there, it offers a beautiful wasteland to explore and some pretty cool vehicle combat.