Re: Mad Max
Story trailer:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TsYIpYow7D0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Hands-on Impressions:
Kotaku
Eurogamer
Story trailer:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TsYIpYow7D0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
...
Hands-on Impressions:
Kotaku
I got to play the Mad Max game during a brief hands-on session in Los Angeles last week, and although the upcoming game does a good job recreating some of Fury Road’s vicious car battles, it also feels empty and shallow, the result of too open a world and too many lessons from gamification. As I played, the game barraged me with notifications, achievements, and arbitrary objectives that felt more like a to-do list than a grand open-world adventure.
As an example: when I used my harpoon to rip off an enemy’s tires, metal screeching, the game immediately greeted me with a prompt saying that I yanked 1/5 tires and that I should go do it some more to get the achievement (or trophy, or whatever). When I destroyed an enemy watchtower, the game said GOOD JOB and told me to rinse and repeat. Every accomplishment came coupled with an endless reminder that I was just filling boxes on a checklist—it felt like the worst parts of a Ubisoft game or, to some extent, like the dreaded Farmville.
This is all too bad, because the hand-to-hand combat is really fun—basically the Arkham games with more brutal weapons and guns—and it’s quite satisfying to drive around smashing into enemy Warboys (who are way less entertaining when they’re mindless NPCs). There’s a ton of stuff to do, from chasing down enemy convoys to sniping baddies out of the back of Max’s car, but so much of it feels like it’s in the game to hit some sort of arbitrary list of features—look what you can do!—rather than to create a meaningful experience. Objectives are there just for the sake of having objectives.
As an example: when I used my harpoon to rip off an enemy’s tires, metal screeching, the game immediately greeted me with a prompt saying that I yanked 1/5 tires and that I should go do it some more to get the achievement (or trophy, or whatever). When I destroyed an enemy watchtower, the game said GOOD JOB and told me to rinse and repeat. Every accomplishment came coupled with an endless reminder that I was just filling boxes on a checklist—it felt like the worst parts of a Ubisoft game or, to some extent, like the dreaded Farmville.
This is all too bad, because the hand-to-hand combat is really fun—basically the Arkham games with more brutal weapons and guns—and it’s quite satisfying to drive around smashing into enemy Warboys (who are way less entertaining when they’re mindless NPCs). There’s a ton of stuff to do, from chasing down enemy convoys to sniping baddies out of the back of Max’s car, but so much of it feels like it’s in the game to hit some sort of arbitrary list of features—look what you can do!—rather than to create a meaningful experience. Objectives are there just for the sake of having objectives.
Disrupting a convoy was a highlight of what was shown, and the best example of Mad Max's central car combat. At the head of a convoy, whose route is marked out on the map in red, you have a War Rig-style heavy vehicle, with every other car in its dusty wake acting as its protection and muscle. You can use the car's harpoon and other long-range weapons to weaken enemy defences, you can use a quick boost of nitro to ram into them from behind, or you can speed up alongside to bash into them from either side.
All this can be done without ever slowing down, and it comes pretty close to capturing the energy and pace of Fury Road, especially when a car explodes in front of you and all that's left is a single flaming tire wobbling sadly in its wake.
All this can be done without ever slowing down, and it comes pretty close to capturing the energy and pace of Fury Road, especially when a car explodes in front of you and all that's left is a single flaming tire wobbling sadly in its wake.
Wyse assures me that although the game was developed alongside the film, the central thread of its narrative has remained consistent from the start. "That was the one through-line that we locked in with George Miller early on, and we really stuck to it. We built this open world that really breathes around the spine of that story. We've built other pieces; we want to expand your role with some of the stronghold leaders that you'll meet and the alliances that you'll strike with them, but the spine has actually remained very consistent." Unfortunately, that spine at present doesn't seem to include any of the film's notable female characters, with the central relationship of the game focusing on Max (whose beard, by the way, you can "grow out if you want to") and Chum. That's not to say the game won't feature any Furiosa-lite side characters, but in my playthrough at least, I didn't meet any.
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