Recent reviews by Yasha

TL;DR: Story = 7/10, Mechanics = 4/10, World = 4/10 (4 only because good graphics, rest is ♥♥♥♥♥), Characters = 8/10 (only high point of this game), vehicles = 4/10 (great car models but driving doesn't feel substantial, lack of vehicle variety (can't even paint your car either) and the physics is primitive, to describe it nicely)

First few days of playing this were great. Everything was initially novel and the graphics had won me over since I do like good looking games. The story was interesting, and in general it's a good story, but I needed to play this game a lot to learn about its unacceptable flaws, because once I neared the end this game could no longer hide the false advertising that the publisher blatantly conducted for over the past two years.

For starters, there is a lot of cut content. The 6 months spent with Jackie during the prologue were cut, ruining the intro and further showing how CD Projekt Red lied about different "lifepaths" affecting the overall experience of the game. Also cut is the interaction with factions as promised by CD Projekt as well as the police system they advertised as ruthless and often chasing you with powerful mercenary groups. Instead, the police AI spawns in a random location in your vicinity and despawns the moment you are out of earshot. It took them 8 years to develop this game and the police won't even chase you in cars. CDPR must be the first company to be AAA developer for one game before being sent back to the amateur leagues.

And it's not just the police system, the world in general is extremely static and consists of zero AI for NPCs and even main characters. Every interaction is hard scripted like a child's first coding project. I don't need to demonstrate the existence of countless immersion and game-breaking bugs, glitches and crashes that occur when playing the game - you can see it on every media platform. To add insult to injury, performance is also subpar. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a poorly optimized game created by a small team on an older version of CryEngine. That game runs better than this one while delivering a visual experience on par. There is no excuse for a large studio like CD Projekt to release a game that's halfway into proper development.

The game is marketed as an open world RPG Sandbox, and what is delivered is a large world with no interaction, an RPG with mechanics inferior to games that were released in the 2000s, superficial story differences between most dialogues, and the sandbox part? Complete lie. All the interesting mechanics that they advertised to propel this game to "next-gen" status ended up being shallow implementations or cut from the game entirely.

The development of this game was not complete, therefore we cannot call this a complete product. And I have no interest in paying full price for a game that's nothing as advertised. Whether this was their original vision or not, doesn't change that false advertisement should not be rewarded.

Game is 7.5/10 for me, but before I explain let me just say one thing:

Plebs - just because your potato system can run GTA 5 and Fallout doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥ that you can expect to run this game with hardware below the requirements. Stop giving this game negative reviews and maybe save up for an upgrade.

This game is good because

1.) Beautiful (although simplistic) world design.

2.) Incredibly versatile sandbox with quality physics simulation.

3.) Really fun and responsive air vehicles.

4.) Wingsuit traversal is really fun, although I think it's too fast.

5.) The map is huge (but smaller than Just Cause 2 because most of it is just water)

The actual reasons this game may receive a legit negative review are the following:

1.) Short story. Like...really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ short. Imagine Just Cause 2 Agency missions but no faction missions. Unsatisfactory ending. But most of you don't care about this so let's move on.

2.) ♥♥♥♥♥♥, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ side activities that you're forced to do just to unlock the fun mods (it's almost as if they wanted microtransactions for those mods but got scared and just put them behind challenges instead).

3.) Car handling isn't as good as advertised, also no stunt mode jumping between cars and the only way to get onto a car is to hook towards it, no pressing alt to get on top. Overall discourages driving cars.

4.) Tons of glitches, the only annoying ones to be honest are audio related where your gun sounds or vehicle sounds just disappear. Game also occasionally crashes though I suspect this will be patched sooner than later.

5.) Just Cause 2 fans are disappointed as ♥♥♥♥ because this game isn't better than Just Cause 2 (I'm one of them). It's not that this game isn't good - just that JC2 is way, WAY better. If this game is a 7.5 JC2 is a 9.5, and mad max is at the same level as this game.



Do NOT buy if you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ old system as you will be disappointed. And this includes processor - avoid if you don't have an unlocked K series processor (or X series) from Intel. As for AMD processors I cannot say much.

I'd give it a 7/10, here's why:

Pros:
-Extremely well optimized, runs like butter, the absolute opposite of the previous Batman game.
-Beautiful world, character details and personalities.
-Huge explosions and good car physics.
-Some of the main missions are really fun.

Cons:
-Fairly repetitive, especially when it comes to clearing camps. Can occasionally feel like a chore. If you've played Watch Dogs you know what I mean.
-Enemy AI can be a little stupid at times. The cars chasing you may suddenly despawn or run away even if they're winning (war parties, and this has nothing to do with territories).
-Top Dogs all have the same fighting style, like heavy tanks that you dodge once, hit a few times, and repeat.
-Max's motives are quite vague for a good chunk of the game.

Mad Max is good enough but I think it could've been way better. I hope Avalanche releases an improved Just Cause 3.

If eSports has a future, this is it. Thousands of hours of dedication and it's still worth it.