This game massively surprised me. Most movie>game efforts are disappointing, with the exception of a rare few (eg. Riddick, Avatar). Although lacking some of the personal touches that makes the films so great, Mad Max is a solid free-roam RPG.

Let me humanise the game for a second to put what it offers into perspective, and bare with me, this is a strange way to go about it, I'm fully aware of that, but it works damnit! So... it has the looks of Rage, body or Borderlands, personality of Fallout and aggression of the Batman Arkham series.

To elaborate, the world reminds me (if not of the Mad Max films), of the Rage environment, everything looks dead, brown and dull - but there's hidden treasures, caves, underworld settlements and incredibly well crafted structures all over. The driving and fluidity of the game feels very Borderlands making almost all activities fun (rare in a game of such scale), the particular post-apoc setting (no more water, most of what is left are mutated freaks just trying to survive with dotted overlords controlling certain regions), oozes Fallout's atmosphere. I almost feel like I'll come across a vault survivor fighting for the same settlement as me. Now the combat, despite its simplicity (it really only requires three buttons, max <- no pun intended), it's actually incredibly enjoyable, rewarding well timed counters and attacks, if I was to relate the combat to any game, it'd have to be Batman - however to my knowledge there's no other post-apoc freeroam title with combat anywhere close to Mad Max and if there is... I'd love to know of it.

The world is huge, even at the time of writing this, I've only fully cleared 1 of 5-6 areas and I'm a good 25 hours in. I have no idea how quick the game would be if you just rushed the story missions, since that's just not how I play games like this, but it'd still be 10 hours minimum. There's also huge amounts of collectables, which unlike many others games, are actually fun to collect - since it's more than just finding a trophy in a bush. Scrap is the currency but placed in areas that suggest the game considers it as a collectable, there's also additions cars, chassis, hood ornaments and personal relics that present memories of when the world wasn't dead. This adds a ton of time to the game's playtime for me, but others might not be that bothered about collectibles, and luckily there's countless ways to gain scrap which is used both to upgrade yourself as a character and your car, this is well balanced and adds a lot to the feeling of overall progression.

This game is nearly perfect for me, and although landing 5 stars - it does have some issues that may bother people more than it did me. Firstly, weapons in the game are fairly worthless - you'll get most the combat done more effectively with just your fists, I honestly would have preferred a larger selection of guns than pointless sticks and handmade maces. And that brings me to the gun - and I meant gun, the only handheld weapon usable in the game is a sawn-off shotgun, and personally I don't even find it that fun to use, since it's mostly a tool as opposed to a weapon as such (however can be used in combat should you enjoy it's functionality).

Secondly, the story is cool, but besides the leaders of each reason, none of the characters have much personality - something Rage suffered with. Which means the game creates less of a story to become attached to, leaning more on the side of just falling in love with the world you explore.

Lastly, something I think many single player post-apoc games lack is multiplayer and/or online awareness - Borderlands is a great example of a game that has both, amazing co-op action that even though I can accept probably wouldn't work well in Mad Max, Rage-like races or co-op missions would have worked great as well as online awareness, like Borderlands when you kill your 50th Skag and it tells you you've just passed a particular friend's record.

Solid - 9.5/10

Cool Like 5/5