Sorry, Avalanche. But it's true.
On Tuesday, gamers were treated to a serious tug of war. Okay, not that serious. But they were asked to choose between two of the year's most anticipated titles, Mad Max and Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain. I haven't seen the numbers, but the winner was pretty clear. Even in the court of public opinion, Mad Max lost the day. In fact, Mad Max has been losing since E3. That was the first time the public was given an opportunity to see and try the game. The results were astounding. Before its time on the show floor, people were clamoring to see it and try it. After doing so, no one wanted anything to do with the title. The fight controls were fine, but driving was terrible. For a game built around the car, that's not good.
Well, Avalanche has done some work since then, and the controls for driving seem much better. However, the overall problem is much more evident now. I decided to put my money into Phantom Pain, as I'm assuming it's going to be the biggest game of 2015. Yet, I really wanted to see what all the non-hype in regards to Mad Max was all about. Everyone I knew thought releasing the two games on the same day was death for one, and we all know which one. Thankfully, my friendly neighborhood redbox happened to have a copy. So I rented Max. I just took the game back not that long ago.
The problem here is that in those couple days, I was able to beat the story mission, 100%. Now, that's not 100% total game completion, just story. For just the story, that's not too bad. Though, for a game that's supposed to have over 100 hours of play time, it's terrible. There's a lot of reviews of Mad Max across the internet, some good, and some bad. The general consensus seems to be 'good enough'. If you would have told someone in February that this game would be considered 'good enough' they'd have thought you were crazy. Fury Road did fantastic at the box office, giving audience a wonderful continuation/reboot of the series. For people that knew nothing about Max, it was a great film.
So why didn't any of that translate to a game? Well, there's a number of reasons for that. First, licensed games are never treated with the same reverence that original titles receive. In fact, this is not the first time that Warner Bros Interactive has created a sin against licensed material. Batman Arkham Origins was so terrible in just about every aspect that control of the series was given back to Rocksteady. But WBI is not alone in its treatment of licenses. The studios behind Lost, Star Trek, and half a dozen others should be called out for the atrocities they unleashed upon paying customers. People will complain that Until Dawn is too short, and it is. But it offers us opportunities in gaming that have never been seen before. That, and the motion capture is so clean it's almost video.
When you play Mad Max, you get a sense that the developers know about the previous films, but have never really seen them. There's references to all three (pre-Fury Road) within the game. They call Max a 'Raggedy Man' and they fight in a dome where 'two enter and one leaves'. We all know what that means. But the soul of Max Max was not translated. Max is not a redeemable character. In addition, his motivations are so muddled that they often make no sense.
SPOILER ALERT:
So in the beginning, Max is driving through the wasteland, in a car called 'Black on Black'. Then Max is attacked, the car is taken, and he's left for dead. Max finds out the car has been demolished. So, the whole game is about building a car to replace the first. Nothing else matters. Literally. Everything is about rebuilding his car. He helps others, but only to get more supplies, or better equipment. That is Max right from the movies. Trade goods and services with no allegiances. He can help the four major factions, Jeet, Gutgash, Pink Eye, and Deep Fryah. Oh, that's Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, in case you were curious. What's more, the story will only continue at some parts if you do the side missions, which means you are forced to drive around and complete random tasks. It takes the fun out of it when there's no choice in the matter. What if I wanted to just do the story?
By the end, Max has to help Hope, a concubine, to get her daughter back. Hope and her daughter Glory. Now, here's where things get odd. Max doesn't want to help them. But he does. To a point. Then, he doesn't care. So here's where Max is no longer Max. The guy building his car, Chumbucket the hunchback, takes the car because he's afraid Max will take the car and leave him behind. Then, the bad guy kills Hope and Glory as revenge. Max goes over the edge with grief and anger, to the point that he hears their voices demanding death. Then, as soon as they'r avenged, he leaves all traces of them in the desert and drives away. Oh yeah, and that car that was destroyed? Not destroyed. In fact, when you drive away at the end, you drive your old car away.
With that being the case, what was the point of the game? In the end, Max didn't grow. He didn't keep the car you have just spent hours upon hours building. He lets everyone he has any emotional bond with die. So why did I play the game? Oh, and to make matters worse, when the credits are over, you can drive around the wasteland some more, just like with every other open world game. Only, Chumbucket is alive, and the car that you built and destroyed is back again. So the game negates its own ending. Why is that fun?
With a main character who is unsympathetic, a supporting cast that I don't care about, and an ending that negates most of the game itself, its hard to find a good quality in the title. Now, just imagine that I kept the game another day and did everything else, that the threat level in all the areas was dropped, and no bad guys are left. What fun remains? Driving a car around sand dunes? If I wanted to just drive around, why wouldn't I buy GTA? You can't honestly tell me that the wasteland environment is so compelling that I would come back for more. Because I don't want to.
I know a lot of other games use the system where they unlock the best stuff later in the game, but never is it more evident than when it's stuff on a car. What's makes it worse is that the times that you need the better stuff, you can't get it. Then, at the end, when you have all the goodies, you don't really need them. Seriously. At least with a game like Assassin's Creed that unlocks gear as the game unfolds, you need all the gear to finish the last level. With Mad Max, I didn't. I didn't have the very best stuff. My car wasn't maxed out. I wasn't as tough as the bad guy vehicles. But I still won. Actually, it was a lot easier to beat the final boss than it was to beat a lot of the other bosses throughout the game. The worst time was the huge Scrotus fight about 2/3 through the game, when he gets more health constantly, I couldn't really, and there was an almost endless flood of cronies joining the fight. He beat me up through four levels of the base. It just kept going, and going, and going... The word 'absurd' started flashing in my head after the second level. And that's another problem. That fight was as hard as some end of the game fights, or challenges. Yet, it was nowhere near the end of the game. I still had lots to do.
Does the game deserve all the negativity surrounding it? No. It is pretty fun. But it's also extremely frustrating, in ways that most open world games aren't. There's no character arc. I don't care about anyone. The supporting cast is so hollow and wooden they should be checked for termites. Hope is the only character that I have any semblance of devotion to, but she's so woefully underdeveloped her death means nothing. The system designed to reveal things on the map doesn't reveal everything. The main story is almost a side quest as compared to how much time you need to spend on the side quests if you want the best gear. The controls in the big race are terrible. The controls on cars that aren't the one you're building are terrible. There are absolutely no twists, no moments of shock.
It's great that the game isn't tied into the movie, specifically. But it is tied into the franchise, and things that I love from the franchise were missing. Missing or dismissed entirely. The developers took Max's motivation from the first film, his family, and made that the only driving point. He doesn't grow or learn, or care about anyone else. In the second two films of the originals, he does. He sacrifices himself for others, after realizing that being out for himself will only get him killed. Max doesn't learn that in the game.
You know what, Avalanche? I really like Just Cause. I played one and two, and am looking forward to three. But with a fighting system completely lifted from Batman and driving controls that make me wish I could plug an actual steering wheel into the controller, and writing that could have been done by drunk college dropouts, this game leaves a lot to be desired. If I paid 60 bucks, I'd be mad. I'd be very angry. It's not worth 60 bucks. The gaming experience that I went through was worth exactly what I paid for it. $6.43.
