Anyone on the fence about Mad Max I might try streaming it

Never tried the PS4's streaming before but I'll give it a go. No idea if my internet is good enough for a quality stream though.

Only played for about an hour so far but it seems alright so far. Fighting is straight out of Arkham with basic hits and counters, and some context sensitive animations depending on your surroundings. Only had one small sample of car combat so far, learned how to shoot gas tanks and ram stuff.

This is only driving game I can think of that doesn't have a handbrake. The controls are pretty packed but still, feels like a major omission.

worth playing?

It's the standard open world formula. A base camp in each region, various enemy camps and outposts to take down in order to lower the threat level in the region, collecting scrap to upgrade Max and the car. It's whether you like this particular world or not that will make or break it probably. Some games like I can't stand. Shadow of Morder I put down after about 15 minutes. But this is good.

I've barely upgraded the car but the harpoon is fun. It's kind of like the grapple from Just Cause. You can drive along and rip off car wheels with it, or pull the door off another vehicle and then harpoon the driver. You can shoot gas tanks with your shotgun but ammo is always scarce. Then there's special vehicles and huge convoys but I'm not strong enough to take them down yet. All in aid of getting scrap to customise your car.

This is one of very easy enemy camps. They all have varying amounts of perimeter defenses depending on what difficulty level they are. If the snipers spot and you don't take them out in time they can buff the defenses so it's harder to get it. Same thing with the Warcrier, if you leave him alive he can buff the fighters inside the camp, which is what happened. I picked up some shotgun ammo but I didn't realise it, so I didn't wait to reload, which is why I couldn't shoot him without getting punched. Afterwards though I noticed there was a rack of spears in that place that I could have used to take him out.

I think being released on the same day as MGSV really hurt this game.

Here's one of the convoys:



Managed to do it without having to stop for repairs. I'm still in the first territory so I've barely upgraded my car. No armour or weaponry apart from the harpoon yet. You can get explosive spears and wheel spikes and stuff later. The armoured cars are a pain right now. I have upgraded the harpoon a bit to pull off tires and doors, but it's still pretty weak. Shooting fuel tanks is the best way of dealing with cars but you soon run out of ammo.

Speaking of fuel, it's plentiful. It's in there as a game mechanic, it's possible to run out of fuel, but it'll most likely never happen. Fuel cans are plentiful in camps, you can store a can of fuel on your car, strongholds refuel you whenever you enter them after some upgrades, a full tank lasts absolutely ages and you can get upgrades to consume even less fuel than normal.

I suppose running out of fuel frequently, or it being a genuinely scarce resource, would just be incredibly frustrating and counter to what players want out of a car-based action game. But it feels like a cop out to include fuel as a consumable resource but then give you what amounts to an easily accessible infinite supply.

Also, I just discovered "Capture Mode", sitting there in one of the pause menus not drawing any attention to itself. At first I thought it was just a photo mode, with the expected filters and such. But it also has a lot of borders and Mad Max logos to use. And then I saw that it had a video mode. In which you can apply all of the photo mode options to the gameplay, and if you have a second controller and a second player who's always dreamed of being a cameraman, they can control the camera while you play the game. I only have the one controller but still, it was a nice surprise.

I've got almost 30 hours on this game now and I've only done 6 story missions. It seems like you could blow straight through since they give you the bare minimum necessary upgrades, but a lot of the upgrades are locked behind lowering the threat levels in each area. Taking out all the camps, minefields, snipers, etc.

Here's a better look at the vehicle combat now that I have some more upgrades. The Thunderpoon is basically a rocket launcher and it destroy any vehicle with less that Lvl 2 armour instantly, which kind of makes it boring, but I guess once I advance to the next area it'll be harder again. The first and second hald of the map is separated by a huge wall and gate which you have to destroy.



The melee is a bit better once you buy some of the upgraded skills. There's incentive to time the counter attacks properly because a Perfect Parry lets you do an awesome limb-breaking move, like this one:

Like donnie yen o_O

I want this game now.