It’s been a long time since Mad Max was a big name in films, but next year the post-apocalyptic warrior will not only receive a new movie, but also a new video game headed to current and next-generation consoles. While the game is not closely related to the film, this is not Mel Gibson’s Mad Max character. It looks much closer to the version portrayed by Tom Hardy in the new movie.
Mad Max is essentially an open world destruction derby game with some shooting and exploration elements to flesh things out. The demo Warner Brothers showed off took us on a quest to take down a gate in Deadman’s Pass. Of course, before we could get to the area and figure out how to disable the gate, we first had to get in our vehicle and drive to the destination.
Vehicular combat plays a big role in Mad Max. There are over 50 vehicles featured in the game, with the ability to create your own war machine. You can customize the tires, grill, armor, chassis, engine and just about anything else you can imagine. The goal is to create a machine that can take a beating and keep causing destruction and mayhem. The heavier and more armored your vehicle becomes, the more destruction you’ll be able to cause. But as you add items to the machine, it will begin to handle differently, influenced by the extra weight and other variables.
The key to customizing your car is not to max out all of the different categories. Instead, you want to create a custom vehicle that serves a specific purpose. For instance, in the mission to take out the gate at Deadman’s Pass, we needed a vehicle that excelled at ramming. There were a variety of subcategories that could be altered and customized to fulfill this purpose.
With vehicle customization so important, looting and scavenging are equally crucial. You’ll need to find and utilize as many different items as you can. As you traverse the large world map looking for items to scavenge, you’ll come across random encounters with a variety of enemies.
After taking down a slew of vehicular enemies (a mini-quest on the way to Deadman’s Pass), we had to step out of the car and use Max’s trademark shotgun as well as a variety of other weapons to take down enemies on foot. Stealth is not a big portion of Mad Max, but you can sneak up on unsuspecting enemies and take them out from behind. We did so in this mission, taking down an enemy sniper and securing his sniper rifle. Once the path to the gate was clear, we made sure our vehicle was equipped with ramming gear and took it down.
Our brief look at Mad Max was a pleasant one, but it’s hard to tell exactly what to expect from this massive game given the single mission we were shown. It has the look and feel of the Mad Max world and the car combat was interesting to say the least. We’ll keep a close eye on this one as we draw closer to its 2014 release date.
Published: Jun 18, 2013 09:07 am