3.5 out of 5 stars.

The perilous action and fast cars of the Mad Max films have always had audiences on their seat, and Avalanche Studios aimed to do the same with their videogame adaption of the popular series. Mad Max creates its own story, pulling inspiration from many of the films, to form a unique and new path for Max to wander. However, will this story be one of sacrifice and victory, or one of bravado and false hope?

Mad Max begins on a rough note. Max is reduced to little more than a corpse, after having everything taken from him from the vicious warlord Scrotus. Finding a dog who leads him to supplies, Max encounters Chumbucket, a hunchback with a religious devotion to building the wasteland’s greatest car. Seeing use in him, Max joins Chumbucket on a quest to build the alleged Magnum Opus and escape the wastes. The story is hushed in the first half of the game, and only begins to pick up once players have truly invested time into the wasteland. Many of the characters seem a little underacted, but that may be due to the great performance put on by Chumbucket, your sidekick and devoted mechanic, who speaks with a hyper, religious rhetoric as he repairs and upgrades your car.

As interesting as the characters may be, however, one stands out the most; the Magnum Opus, the player’s new car and shelter, which can be customized into a variety of menacing war machines in an instant. The vehicles look and sound wonderful, and the customization is great. Install better exhaust on your car, and the sound improves. Put a giant ramming bumper onto the front and shunt lower buggies out of your way with ease. The customization has been designed perfectly to prevent players from building the toughest, fastest vehicle in the wastes. Each car must sacrifice some parts in favor of others, or it will be virtually impossible to drive.

The world is vast and presents a unique and desolate plain for the character to drive through and scavenge from. Set in an ocean bed that somehow was drained of its water, players will jump over coral reefs and through sunken cruise ships as they trek across the pale sands. Half of the world is gated off until the player progresses far enough into the upgrade tree, but this doesn’t feel limiting and encourages players to stay behind and clean up the wasteland before moving on to deeper water.

Being set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, parts and supplies are very scarce. Ammunition is very limited, and players heal using water, which can be found dotted around the various camps and wrecks in the wasteland. Eating various foul food items can also offer a full heal, but the upgrade tree quickly lowers the severity of these restrictions. Players who invest wisely will find they are always full on water and have a relatively high amount of ammunition, discouraging the need to explore and gather supplies.

The story is short and somewhat sweet, but there are hours of enemy camps and other wasteland landmarks to explore and attack. While the brawls and boss battles of the larger camps can quickly become competitive, the side content manages to keep players guessing.

The Mad Max films have certainly had a magnificent effect on videogaming as a whole, and it can be argued that video games now present the best medium for expressing the formidable realities of the post-apocalypse. The Mad Max game does an excellent job of picking up the tools the films left behind and putting them to use, mainly on a car, but also on interesting characters and an expansive wasteland that is full of surprises. Mad Max is a great game for fans of the films, or for anyone who has ever dreamt of surviving the apocalypse in a tricked-out car.