You Need To Play Mad Max (Retrospective)

Mad Max released right in between Metal Gear Solid 5 and The Witcher [Music] 3 we're not here for The Witcher free yet not yet anyway if you want to see that subscribe Mad Max is probably one of the most overlooked open World Games I've ever played I just made a review on my other main Channel Jack's game reviews and I couldn't help but make a retrospective on it cuz I want to talk more in depth with spoilers the lot I also want to talk about the development process before hand or more about how it released and why it failed financially so let's start there so Mad Max was developed by Avalanche Studios the guys behind just cause if you don't know what just cause is it's another open world franchise but it's more focused on destruction interacting with the world having a bit of fun there's no real focus on story or law or anything you play as a guy who blows [ __ ] up which is why they're perfect for Mad Max you see Mad Max has a franchise it's big but it's still very Niche it's as niche as you can really get while making a lot of money the original films came out in like 1980 with Mel Gibson and all that stuff but you know it kind of faded out of cultural relevance I guess and then Mad Max Fury Road got released in 2014 madmax Fury Road the film is really good it's really good but it didn't get a game with it which is where Mad Max comes in the game it's a bit confusing because they just called it Mad Max so it's hard to talk about but the game came out in 2015 and I don't really know too much about the development behind it I don't know much about the devel velopment process or anything like that but I know it released in between mdle Gear Solid 5 and The Witcher 3 two of the biggest games of 2015 and arguably two of the biggest games of the last decade at the end of the day this really is just another open world game the story isn't really interesting it's not really worth talking about too much but we will we will talk about it but it was just another open world game to many people especially critics I give critics a hard time when it comes to like the big guys IGN game spot because they have multiple reviewers but even you know down to earth reviewers people that are just themselves running their Channel by themselves like myself even they were getting a bit tired of the open world formula and they still are today cuz it's still going on but every now and then a game for me like Mad Max comes around where it's everything you tend to dislike in games today but it has just such a level of quality in what it tries to do you can't help but respect it so this is Mad Max a retrospective or why it's so underrated I'm not really sure what I'm going to call the video but I'm basically just going to be circlejerking it while also giving it a bit of a critical look especially when it comes to story because oh my God that has got to be the worst part of this entire game the story is [ __ ] it is [ __ ] so let's go back to 2015 So Mad Max gets announced don't remember too much of it I think it just got a trailer it wasn't really any presentations or anything it didn't get a lot of uh attention really all the attention was going to like the big games like The Last of Us remastered The Witcher free met G solid you know as I've already mentioned there were a lot of good games coming out around 2014 2015 so it just got overshadowed by the just the bigger IP it's just how it goes it's just how it works so gameplay comes out there's a gameplay demo I'm pretty sure and you know it just looks like another open world game and it's from an IP that a lot of people don't really watch or understand it's a guy in a car there's sand it's apocalypse again and it just looks a bit generic it comes down to release and it just does not do very well it could have been a lot worse but but it just it kind of failed to live up to expectations in every sense financially critically and just overall engagement for the game's release uh for potential DLC for a potential sequel it was pretty clear right from the GetGo it probably was not going to continue on it doesn't help that Avalanche also just released just cause fre you see just cause was avalanche's baby it's the it's the game you go to for an avalanche game you know what I mean it's just one of them so madmax was kind of just out of the blue kind of out of the way and to release it right after just calls 3 not even a year apart it kind of sets off red flags doesn't it you think hang on they've just released a game clearly this is just their dud they didn't do much marketing for it it's Mad Max game what the hell is Mad Max who cares about Mad Max so right from there even big fans of avalanche some of them anyway probably weren't interested in the game they've just spent the hard money on just cost free so it just released at an inopportune moment is what I'm trying to say with games like The Witcher 3 coming out with Incredible reviews incredible financial success along with Metal Gear Solid 5 which didn't review as well as Witcher 3 because of obviously half the game was like cut I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly but that was still successful because it's Metal Gear Solid one of the most popular franchises in gaming good job Konami you really you've really done well with Metal Gear Solid haven't you mate what are what are Konami doing man I don't understand it they're remaking Metal Gear Solid three wow why you make a new game why you get creative Konami by the way the last time they did that they did zombies I don't get it I don't understand Kobi anyway let's move on so madmax releases no one plays it I don't know anyone that's actually played Mad Max apart from people in the comments of my previous video on Jack's game reviews which is such a shame So Mad Max opens up with a really really cool cut scene Max is roaming the world he's been attacked his C's getting nicked he's he's trapped he's got to beat his way out he's got to stop this guy called scotus and he puts a chainsaw on his head and and then off you go you're thrown into the open world you meet a guy called Chum Bucket he works on cars and he hates dogs apparently I mean he doesn't hate dogs but he probably eat the dog rather than keeping it as a pet which is not cool from there you go on you learn the combat you learn how the car works you learn how you what you learn what you're going to be doing for most of the game no let a lie all of the game and off you go man Max is all about upgrading your car called The magnum opus the magnum opus the key to it why you're upgrading it is cuz Max wants to travel to the the lands of Silence I think they call it I think cuz it's not very memorable to be honest and that's about it for the story I'm not even joking that that's it Max meets a couple of characters every now and then when you go into a new region of the open world you do a couple tasks with them and then you go off to the next region the only time the story gets interesting is towards the end to its detriment weirdly enough you see with Mad Max it's all about the gameplay it's all about the open world it's all about exploring you know what I mean going and finding loot upgrading your car upgrading Max so the story just naturally comes second it just is what it is but once you hit act three and act four you've kind of already upgraded most of the things you can upgrade because you've been looting and all that crap so the developers decide let's put more story in the problem with that is that it's super super rushed do you meet a girl you meet a redhead girl and a kid and Max is tasked with saving the kid and he brings the kid back and all of a sudden this this woman wants Max to stay around you I guess she wants a father figure for a kid or or something even I don't understand and I beat it like two days ago so the story kind of loses any sense of consistency or just natural prog ression you know what I mean it's really weird but because of that the developers take a bit more risks with how they present the story cuz so far the entire story has been all Exposition really you meet a character they tell you who they are what they do Chum buckets in the back of your head just saying all this story stuff Exposition it's just Exposition but in act three and act four they decide to become a bit more risky with visual storytelling you start getting these weird dream like sequences with Max and you kind of start to somewhat understand Max as a character because Max throughout this entire game he's just he's just a guy he's just a mad person you just he's just there for the player he is a vessel for the player throughout the entire game but with act three and act four they kind of really true do try to push the story onto you cuz they think I think the thought process was you spend 15 hours with this bloke you're going to care about him but that just isn't the case I did not give to [ __ ] about Max I don't think anyone actually cares about Max in Mad Max they care about the world they care about the other characters around him he's just the vessel there so they did kind of nail it from a branding point of view but as a game itself as a singular game it needed more for Max and well we'll just get into it we'll get into it let's [ __ ] it let's do it let's do it I've got time let's do it Max as a character doesn't need to work that's what I'm trying to say he's a vessel for the player he's a vessel for the the people watching the film okay everything's about the open world But as time goes on they really do try to get you to care about him and I respect that I respect that a lot because the ending is it wouldn't be as impactful if they just did the same thing over and over again which is why I respect the addition of this female character and this kid admittedly I don't know their names because they're not very interesting but that's not the point of the characters the point is Max kind of has a glimpse of hope you know what I mean he kind of has a glimpse of going back to what it was like before the apocalypse and obviously that's a pretty basic thing to do for a character in an apocalypse film oh I want to go back to my old life W yeah that's pretty basic to do but it's something that Max kind of needed as a character in the game so when it gets interesting when it's finally reaching a point where you're like hang on a minute this story is actually kind of kind of interesting I might get into this you get a glimpse of that just like Max does he gets a glimpse of hope you get a glimpse of Hope and then the game's over it just ends it just ends out the blue these characters are dead bye-bye so what happens is Max meets them uh he ditches them cuz he doesn't want to be friends with people and then because of chumbucket your friend your not friend an ally in your car that helps you build a car he accidentally gives information that is vital way and the bad guy called scotus goes and kills the girls and then you go and kill scotus and Chum Bucket dies with the car because the Chum Bucket is more focused on the car than you and the characters that just died basically that's what happens and the reason I like the ending despite the story being complete [ __ ] for like the entire game the reason I like the ending is cuz it sticks with the idea of Max this vessel that you can connect with sort of by putting your own thoughts onto him but it worked for Max because at the end of the game it's like you've done nothing he just goes back he's got his car and he just drives off with no one around him everyone's dead and he's just back to being Max a lone Wanderer trying to escape whatever life has for him you know what I mean he drives off and the credits roll and I really like it that's the whole point that's the whole point it's meant to kind of feel pointless so from a story perspective it kind of works but it also doesn't it really depends on what you want do you want something that is more thematically consistent with the character or do you just want another happy go-lucky story where Max gets the girl and and he changes and you know he's he's he's a better man he's less he's less mad or or whatever that's the easy route to go down but to to finish it off the way they did Avalanche did with the story takes a lot of balls you know cuz cuz you're going to feel like wow this was kind of a waste of time why did why did I do all this and then you know you sit on it for like 5 minutes the credits roll you get back in your car and you're like well actually it makes a lot of sense so that's what I think about the ending but I've kind of jumped ahead haven't I slow it down a bit throughout the game you're going to meet different characters like Jeet rug rash I think rug rash I think he's called as well as pink eye these are like your three main factions that you're going to meet throughout the game cuz they're in different parts of the map it's kind of like um kind of like Red Dead Redemption 2 where you go to a specific part of the map in the story you meet new characters and then you move on to the next part and the other characters are kind of Forgotten you know what I mean it's kind of like that only these characters are far more interesting than Max some of them are really stupid it's pretty obvious a lot of them are overacted but in a world like Mad Max where the apocalypse happens and the the main the main currency in the world is fuel it kind of makes sense to make things very heightened and I quite like that but those are my thoughts on the story it's obviously it's probably the worst game to do my first ever retrospective on especially since I don't have like a proper script I have like bullet points of what I want to talk about because the story is just there's not much to talk about at all to be honest with you which is unfortunate but like I said at the start of the video I'm going to be making other retrospectives like on which witch of free all that stuff Far Cry games probably I'm going to be ranking every Far Cry game ranking every Assassin's Creed game all that stuff so make sure you subscribe for that join the sticky man stick with the sticky man let's go stick with me please I beg 60 Subs already in a week let's go anyway let's go to the game play now if you've come from Jack's game reviews cuz I made a review on my 20K Channel firstly and now I'm doing the retrospective you already know what I'm going to say about the gameplay it is the king here this is the King this is why you buy Mad Max the gameplay of Mad Max is absolutely phenomenal repetitive but phenomenal so firstly magnum opus so this is your car this is what you're going to be upgrading throughout the entire game the whole point of playing this game you're going to be running around you're going to be looting you're going to be shooting and you're going to be punching and kicking and grabbing and killing you know what I mean you're going to be doing all that all in one goal upgrading your car you got to find loot you got to find Project Parts you got to find all the stuff it's a loot a shooter basically without the shooting really and while that does sound repetitive because it is very repetitive it is I can't even deny that I don't know what Avalanche did maybe they they took a load of people they experimented on them and their brains and how their dopamine works but this game never ever gets boring at least for me it never got boring and 15 to 30 hours of gameplay doing the same thing over and over again and I didn't get bored is pretty impressive so the whole goal is to upgrade your car and you get various upgrades you can customize your armor your your base for your car so basically I play with like a muscle type car for most of the game but you can actually unlock things called Arch Angels which is very specific car designs which you can unlock and put on your car so it feels a bit different and you can they feel different they handle different they play different which is really important and we'll get to that in a minute but I mainly use the muscle car which is like the first like variant of car you can get I just like it I don't know it just suits me I don't know why but throughout the game you can unlock various upgrades that completely change how you play it completely changes how the car handles how how how effective it is in combat how quick can you escape how intimidating it is in some sense I mean there's no gameplay factor for for that but mentally up here when you get a really cool looking car that looks dangerous which which looks like it could kill you in seconds it feels kind of cool to just drive up and get out and like what you saying you know what I mean it it's pretty cool but that's the beauty of Mad Max you think oh yeah car customization loads of games have got that but Mad Max just does something very different with it the best way I can put it is just to describe how the upgrades work so firstly upgrades aren't about upgrading to the best bit it's not about getting the best upgrade the best upgrade it's not about that it's about finally tuning your car to how you want it to handle for example I prefer top speed I didn't the car combat can can can drag on a little bit we'll get to it in a minute but it can drag on a little bit so I like the idea of escaping as quickly as possible so that's what I did I upgraded my card to have the fastest top speed possible and over time I upgraded my engine for faster acceleration but I I watched a bunch of gameplay before I made this review a lot of people tended to go with armor so the car was much slower it handled its handling was much worse but they were in car combat for like half an hour and they were having an absolute blast so it just goes to show that you can play this game in so many different ways just with the car alone which adds a lot of options it adds a lot of custom customization to this this repetitive game that could potentially play very different for everyone which I really really like obviously it's not an RPG you're not going to have different choices with story you're not going to have a completely different experience to everyone else but with the amount of customization you've got in this car it really does feel like your own little game you know what I mean your own little car you've spent on it and it you know it gives people an option to tune cars without having to buy one in real life cuz they're really [ __ ] expensive at the minute even [ __ ] old cars but how do you upgrade your car well it's quite simple you run around different camps different areas in the world and you collect loot it's literally called scrap you're going to be collecting scrap you're going to be upgrading the bases of the people I've already mentioned like pink eye rug rash Jeet all that stuff and over time you're going to reduce the danger of the environment you're in while also getting more scrap over time like Investments you invest in these buildings that you are allowed to explore without any danger and you get a slow income of scrap over time and you unlock this scrap by beating up enemies looting them looting the areas that they're in as well as doing side missions and stuff like that that's how you unlock your scrap which is why it's so repetitive it say Ubisoft as it can get the combat here is absolutely phenomenal it never gets boring the impact you feel with every punch every kick every takedown every shot I don't I can't really think of a game that has better impact with the the free flow combat system of the Arkham games cuz this game is clearly inspired by the Arkham games the combat is incredibly similar but they do enough things that make it that makes it unique for example your takedowns are only available to you when you have shivs so a shiv is like an instant kill we have to unlock that upgrade over time and then you get Fury mode which is like a a rage mode that I'm pretty sure some games do have that copied the system but here it feels really good the sound just changes you become more focused you just poww pow pow it's really really cool enemy variety is a little bit lacking it is a little bit lacking but there's enough there to keep you interested so you've got like Shield enemies you've got fast enemies that Dodge your punches so you have to counter them you've got other enemies that are more ranged like snipers and then you got big guys that have hammers that you have to dodge there's enough here to keep you interested for at least at minimum 15 hours I believe anyway and with the upgrades you get a ton of different options for combat like wool takedowns you can um upgrade your car to take out enemies before you go into combat we'll get to that in just a minute and overall as a package it is the best part of the entire game some would say the car combat but we'll get to that in a minute n [ __ ] that let's just let's get on with the car combat this video is only 25 minutes long well probably 15 but we'll see so the car combat is the big takeaway this is what makes Mad Max the most unique open world game I've played in a while is that it's all based on car combat or car Fu as you like some people might call it so the key is to upgrade your car as I've said multiple times but this time we're going to talk about weapons so there's a couple weapons you can choose you've got the grappling hook thing where you can shoot it you can take down fences you can take down people you can fling them across you which is really fun you've got I can't even remember what they're called I think they're like thunder strikes or something not Thunder strikes like thunder you basically have a bunch of grenades on a stick and you throw the stick and it blows up that's really cool you also have access to your shotgun to shoot out tires and all that stuff and you also have a sniper which is really interesting now it doesn't sound like a lot of variety uh yeah it's true it's it there isn't much to it but the way you can take down cars enem Vehicles is where it gets interesting so you can shoot out tires you can kill the driver you can blow up fuel tanks you can hook yourself on a car and drag it along with you if you if you have enough strength in your car it's really really interesting and it's hard to talk about it's better off showing you but that's why it's so unique cuz there's loads of different vehicles in this game with different enemy factions and you know all that stuff so every time you go into car combat you it's it feels unique especially towards the end of the game cuz you start meeting a couple more power four enemies that have like mines in their cars you have to dodge the mines while trying to bash into them you're trying to pick your targets one by one but another car comes flying out you you're just like w what the [ __ ] is going on it's really cool it's really cool but it's not perfect nothing ever is and uh for avalanche's first attempt at this kind of combat that I haven't really seen in any other game recently anyway I think it was a really good first attempt the flaws come in when it comes to obviously variety I feel like the it needed a couple more weapons a couple more options to take out vehicles enemy variety while it is decent I definitely think there could have been a couple more interesting ideas like from the film Fury Road you had those enemies that are on like the sticks and they start like flying all over the place like that and Max gets on at one point I think it'd be really cool to have chumbucket your your ally drive the car where you could climb up and try and jump onto another car and steal it or something sounds ridiculous but madmax itself is a ridiculous idea so I think it'd be really cool the more creative you can get with it the better I think anyway but unfortunately it's just a little bit lackluster but it's still really cool and the most unique part of my Max completely nothing quite like a cup of tea you know what I mean oh now the last thing I want to talk about is the open world and level Stein I didn't talk about it at all in my non-spoiler review at Jack game review so I think now would be the best time to talk about it in a retrospective you know I think that's what you call a retrospective I don't even know what a retrospective technically is you look back at it I think I think so anyway hey who knows maybe I got this completely wrong I'll have a comment down telling me I'm wrong anyway so we'll see so the open world itself it's not a Liv breathing open world there's no like civilians or anything like that Rome in the world everyone you meet is going to be an enemy apart from you know your factions inside your buildings but the world itself is always an enemy there's always something around every corner that's trying to kill you whether it's mines in you know the roads where it does warn you there's mines there but mines can kill you pretty much instantly at times there's a giant storm that comes flying across you get warned about it but if you go into the storm you can get special scrap and all that crap that gives you more scrap than usual but it just it sounds and looks so cool and it's such a cool idea the open world itself is your enemy and I love that open world games now are so sanitary you just walk around you don't feel threatened until you see the Red Dot on your map and it's just like G but if you in Mad Max everywhere you got to be alert at all times there could be an enemy driving at you there could be mines there could be a storm coming you could walk into a f in an area of the map where you're not supposed to be yet and they will absolutely Mark you it's so fun it's so dangerous it's so just at the edge of your seat all the time and I love that I love that but the key with the open world is the bases you're going to be taking on throughout the open world there's a ton of bases that you have to go to and you know you have to beat and each base is really welld designed I think so first off you got your perimeter Defenders that's before you even enter the base this often results in snipers shooting at you you've got these guys that throw grenades at you you've got multiple cars roaming around trying to stop you from getting in and as well as fences and you know ways to stop you you and your car getting in so sometimes you have to get out your car to infiltrate it quietly all that stuff so this is just one layer of it and often each base has the same enemies you know what I mean there's not much variation to it but the way they design it the way you get into bases is always different obviously you can do the basic thing where you take out like a fuel tank that's blocking you from ramming the fence but there are so many different options with these bases you can go in from the top there's usually a zip line or you can go underneath you can climb underneath under the base and climb your way up after being all the enemies downstairs I think it's really cool and the way they design it it's so much more interesting than your average Ubisoft game where you walk into a base anywhere you want it's all one level you take out a couple enemies you go into like a building and then that's that with Mad Max you have multiple objectives that you need to complete while doing it while taking on enemies while taking out the big guys and it never ever ever gets boring to me I may be in the minority here cuz obviously it is repetitive that you know it is repetitive I got to keep mentioning that because it's a very flaw game but for me it's just my kind of game you know what I mean this is what I want from an open world something that is so so much passion put into it you can't help but feel it and even though it's repetitive even though they had to cut Corners which is pretty clear with the budget they still managed to make a really fun open World Experience despite having released just cause fre literally months beforehand it just goes to show that they really did care about this game and it makes me care about the game you know what I mean I kind of wish it was more successful I wish I played it at launch now some bases are a bit disappointing some of them can be a bit similar to others but you're often switching from your car to melee combat to shooting to exploring and then going off and doing a different activity you never really think about it after like 2 minutes you're like oh yeah that base was fine and then you go to the next base and that one's really [ __ ] cool you know what I mean so here's what I'm going to do I know I probably haven't talked about everything you guys want me to talk about especially since it's my first retrospective I'm not expecting this to be really good I expect it to be good but not perfect you know what I mean it's it's just one of those learning curves cuz I'm not used to making long long form content but what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave it to you if you managed to get to the end if there's something I haven't talked about leave it in the comments down down below I'll reply to you and we can have a good conversation down below cuz I think that's the best way to do like these review type videos is to get people in the comments get them talking get yourself talking in the comments talk about your experience and then I can kind of respond to it rather than it just being about me you know what I mean it's a bit boring a it or this guy's just talking about himself pretty boring you know that's that's the key so your comments down below let me know what you think obviously like the video if you got to the end you must have enjoyed it a little bit a little bit so come on give that give that like button a tap and maybe even subscribe to stick with the sticky man we're at 63 Subs now so I'm very much looking forward to seeing where this channel goes thank you for watching really appreciate it and hopefully I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Jacks Game Reviews

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Id: dsE5P_5hL2w

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2024