The American film "summer" usually begins around April or May, which although they do not belong to the summer months, at the box office there must always be a certain number of Block busters who sell many cinema tickets, but which usually do not win. statuettes of any kind (except in very rare cases).
However, it sometimes happens that some really interesting product is released in this period, so full of good aspects that in a certain sense it makes you feel good about that part of you that occasionally criticizes your work by saying "but go and see just this crap here?".
Mad Max: Fury Road fully represents this type of release: a film that maybe at the beginning seems like an infinite trash stuff, driven by spectacular trailers and that, at some point, you decide to go and see it because maybe a friend you recommends, or you have read some reviews online, all this until you make the decision to check what good is said about that film.
I admit, I'm not a huge fan of Mad Max, even if Mel Gibson has built his career on it and is one of the actors I most admire, but I just couldn't expect a movie like Fury Road: good, too good, full of images and frames that will remain forever in my imagination, as well as the sand in the film. Lots of Sand. A white sea of sand.
So before proceeding to the subject of this review, I want to make a candid premise to immediately fix a point: Mad Max, the game, is fully inserted in the context of the cinematic universe that revolves around this "saga", so if you are looking for something that makes you live in ... third person the post apocalyptic world of the film, the title of the aAvalanche Studios will not disappoint your expectations.
But that's not the real crux of the matter, the real question is whether Mad Max is a simple tie-in or whether WB Games' spell, which turns every American pop culture franchise into optical gold, has repeated itself. Also here. For this, you will have to wait for the end of the review, so fill your bottle with a few drops of water, remember to fill up, and let's go to Gastown!
Black Jewel
The incipit that accompanies the entire unfolding of the events of Mad Max is already clear in the first few minutes: after having witnessed an initial cut scene where it is explained to us how ours becomes aware of Scabrous Scrotus, the main villain of the game, to Max is stolen his car, the main cornerstone of the whole plot of the game: in fact we will find ourselves having to rebuild a new car from scratch, both because the Interceptor is the only means that can allow us to cross the vast lands of dystopian Australia that presents itself to us right away.
We will immediately meet Chumbucket, a true motor fanatic who considers cars a real religious cult, since every speech will be full of adoration and zeal for his latest creation: the Magnus Opus, which he will create and fix just for us. and will follow us throughout the game like a trusted sidekick.
We will also immediately learn a couple of important rules: in a world like that of Mad Max, you have to know how to sip resources without wasting them, in fact in the game there are no medkits that help us if the health decreases following some fight with the children of war, we will only have a bottle that we will have to fill from time to time at the wells that we will find in various places.
Not only water, but also fuel is not cheap: in fact, every vehicle we have to drive, including our Magnus, will have to be refueled so as not to be dry, otherwise we could find ourselves in the middle of nowhere without being able to go. Getting in and out of the vehicle is not always recommended, as the streets are deserted, but often haunted by enemy patrols aboard their cars.
Finally, another shortage in this crazy desert is that of firearms: in fact, despite having a sort of very "amateur" shot gun right from the start, we will not always be able to accumulate enough ammunition to open the way once. on foot, that's why we will often have to deal with the Mad Max combat system, but we will talk about this later.
Water, Petrol and Bullets, these are the three resources that you will have to constantly try to recover, or at least, that you should look for, since in reality the water wells are too distributed within the various macro-areas, the fuel will hardly fall to critical limits and ammunition can be found often and willingly in outposts as well as the rest of the resources.
If only the developers had put more drama in the search for these 3 things, perhaps the game would have seemed slower, and this goes in favor of the immediacy of the title, but it would have certainly aroused in the user the urgency in grabbing these goods. top notch.
The Long and Winding Road
Then there are other goods that we will find more assiduously and which will be vital for advancement: scrap. The latter represent the currency of the game and will help us a lot in raising the specs of our vehicle: whether it is the tires, the type of engine, or the various armaments such as the harpoon or the sniper rifle, often and willingly we will have to turn our attention to these enhancements, especially following the discovery of a new area which is often followed by a new class.
We will also have to be attentive to the upgrades that we can add to our character, ranging from clothing to brass knuckles, to increase the statistics we need as the game progresses. Both upgrade classes are obtained by paying for them with scrap and usually must first be made available by overcoming objectives or advancing with the main story.
To close the discussion of the upgrade of our equipment, there are special skills that can be unlocked with points "Griffa". Griffa in fact, is another character in the game, a sort of hermit / shaman who will help Max to push the boundaries of his mind.
Going to find him from time to time and spending the aforementioned points, we will end up with a range of peculiar skills that will help us a lot and in my opinion too much in the game, since the latter are focused more on the aspect of the "resources" of which we were talking more about… be it the ability to grab additional ammunition when we rummage around, or the ability to consume less fuel when driving, or even collect more water than we could from a well and so on.
We will also have the possibility, going forward in the story, to be able to fortify a fortress to make it capable of gathering resources, exploring the surroundings and more, but to do this you will have to visit the looting points and find the Project Parts that precisely will serve to bring to completion the respective units and divisions to perform some tasks in the best possible way.
"I said V8!"
The missions are divided according to the objectives, and in addition to those of the main stream, it is possible to cross the streets to take down strange bogies / torches, collect as much scrap as possible from an area, try to dismantle a minefield or take control of a station of oil or other outposts of the followers of Scrotus which, once conquered, will become friendly soil. in each area then there will always be collected collectibles to consider the place "completed".
All this is repeated many times and without too much diversification. The outposts in particular are too similar to them and have often left me perplexed rather than persuaded: children of war always hide inside these small strongholds, but before entering them it is first necessary to sabotage the first alert systems such as snipers or others, after which it will be necessary force the gate to enter (often smashing it with the Magnus).
Once inside, we will gradually face groups of more or less armed henchmen and here the gameplay limits that in my opinion are more worrying, in light of the fact that behind this title there are the same guys from Just Cause: these missions, although the game is offered to the public as an open world, they are at the limit of the linear in fact we will always enter in a "gradual" way and limited to the path that we will be allowed to take, apart from some alternative road that often does not lead to conclusion.
Embarrassing then a feature that I have always found so far in the raids of the good Max: the enemies, except when they spot an intruder, will never come to break the eggs in the basket and this makes everything quite "flat" and certainly does not help to entertain. player.
Fury is nothing without control
On the combat system, little can be said except that it is the classic "attack dodge" in a more street brawl version than in other titles of the genre, with a button, square on the PS4, you will attack enemies with your bare hands, being able to determine the strength of one hit from pressing the button, with a triangle you start a counterattack animation, since to complete it you will have to press the attack button.
With the circle you can quickly shoot a rifle cartridge in the face of the enemies, while with the cross, when it is available in our equipment, you can finish the enemies by cutting their throats with a knife. By feeding a series of consecutive shots and then trying not to get caught by the enemies, it will activate the Furia of Max, a temporary bonus that increases punch power and triggers nasty and spectacular final blows.
In short, nothing as refined as the series of Arkham, but overall it works and going forward we will have other fighting techniques that we can take advantage of, unlocking them among the upgrades related to the character.
Unlike combat, driving sessions have not always been comfortable, above all for two reasons: one, probably more for a specific artistic choice than a technical one, steering your car will not be easy at first as we will have a car that is not too easy in our hands. performing in many respects even if it is true that, driving in the desert, even if you end up off the road you do not find yourself too difficult, second reason, and perhaps more serious, a really inaccurate camera management, this is especially given also the illustrious precedents of Avalanche in fact the driving sessions.
Mad Scrotus
On the technical sector it must be said that, although the textures and models are well cared for, overall the quality levels of Arkham Knight which, remember, is from the same distributing house, but it differs very little from The Shadow of Mordor, which is not bad, but one could always expect more.
The only moment that made me raise my eyebrow is when, on foot, at a certain point a son of war appeared to me who was stationed above a container, but this remains the only pop-up phenomenon so far that I have seen during all the my sessions. The settings are very successful at the graphic and artistic level as also mentioned at the beginning, the desert is well rendered by the sudden changes of lighting and is certainly worthy of praise, also given the risk of being able to turn the desert into a heavy and dull frame.
Even the soundtrack is quite coherent especially with film productions, only the voice acting, at times, is really lacking, if only in many scenes the equalizer has not been used wisely and often important dialogues result from one point of view. unlistenable volume.
Little else needs to be said about Mad Max, a tie in that does not disappoint from the atmospheric and setting point of view, but that does not try to get out of the "homework" as regards the gameplay, often being predictable and too repetitive. Too bad, because a little more diversification would have benefited a title that starts from some good premises. Unfortunately, L'ombra di Mordor really looks like a different pasta than the work of the Avalanche ...
