Mad Max is a game where the divine meets the driveshaft. Where fates and furies touch a flywheel.

It's awesome.

First of all, it's gorgeous. The monotony of the sand dunes is mitigated by a surprising amount of variety in the environment. Pools of oil, rock formations, and flocks of birds split things up naturally. But there are also traces of the past civilization: broken bridges, artificial roads, and vehicle wreckage abound.

The lighting and particle systems are also excellent. The sun's rays make for a lot of dramatic imagery against what might have been an otherwise dreary landscape. I think I took more screenshots of Mad Max than any game I've ever played. My random travels generated breathtaking vistas at an astonishing rate.

And the first time you're caught in a storm outside away from any shelter - it's an unforgettable experience. Progress on challenges gets lost if you die, so the storms can present a real threat to you. They disable fast travel too, so there's no easy escape. This is all as it should be. It makes for some tense segments where you will absolutely have to improvise to stay alive.

Dying is otherwise not that big of a deal because most other types of progress generate an auto save. This is also as it should be. The system encourages you to be bold and more reckless than you might be otherwise, and that seems really in tune with the spirit of Mad Max.

And that's another positive in general: Mad Max was ripe for an open world driving game, but I had no idea. A lot of the concepts and themes translate perfectly. The explosions, the fighting, ramming cars together - it's all a ton of fun.

That said, the melee combat is one of my chief complaints about the game. It gets very repetitive very fast. I was hoping there would be a way to acquire more guns like a silenced pistol for stealth or an assault rifle for mowing down large groups. Sadly there's only the shotgun, and its upgrades don't feel that significant. There was a chance for a lot more depth in both the leveling system and the combat progression for the game as a whole, and the developers didn't take advantage of it.

The car combat, on the other hand, is fantastic. I haven't had this much fun blowing up cars since Twisted Metal, and that came out 20 years ago. The amount of customization and improvements you can make is great, with the possible exception of the weapons. Having to choose between rockets and a minigun might've made things more interesting. But it's hard to knock it at all because the Thunderpoon is the best weapon I've used in a game in years. Plus it has the best name ever.

THUNDERPOON!

The open world aspects and the collectibles were pretty standard, though I was impressed by the variety. Most of it didn't feel old, even at the end. There are three notable exceptions.

First, clearing the minefields was tedious, and this is largely because you have to get a different car from a base and it disappears if you fast travel - I wasted a lot of time forgetting that fact.

Second, the day/night system. There are some missions that can only be performed at night. There are also only certain enemy and car types that appear depending on the time of day, and those distinctions are necessary to complete some of the challenges. BUT, there's no way to fast forward time. What's worse, time can get "stuck" and not move at all. You can spend literally forever waiting for the time to change so you can do that one mission and it will never happen. Nothing you do will affect it. It's incredibly frustrating, and I don't understand how it survived the testing phase.

Third, the challenges. There's a single achievement related to getting all of them, and if you didn't know that before you finished mopping up everything, then you really screwed yourself over. There's no new game plus where the challenges carry over. And enemy spawns at the end of the game when it's all been cleared out are basically nonexistent. Just Cause 3 solved this problem with its "Re-Oppress" feature. Having now played a similar game where that doesn't exist makes me appreciate it a lot more. Plus, that one achievement will add 15-20 hours to your time even if you're prepared for it. They should've found another way, or at least eliminated the more troublesome, time-consuming challenges. It's ridiculous.

Finally, let's talk about the story. It's generally presented well. I have a minor gripe that some of the cinematic action sequences would've been even better if they were playable. It felt like I was forced to watch instead of do things too often. What's worse is the story they were telling itself - clearly, secondary to the gameplay. Max is very much removed from all the characters in this part of the world: he doesn't know a single soul when he gets there. And whatever connections he does make throughout the game seem forced and one-sided. He's just not that sympathetic of a character the way they portrayed him here. On top of that, it doesn't feel like Max had a lot of agency to make choices or change anything. The world is more or less the same for his passing, despite everything you do as the player.

The writing is amazing though. It makes Mad Max one of the best examples I can think of to showcase how dialogue and diction can be top notch while the overall story and plot is bland. Every time Chumbucket (there's a main character named Chumbucket!!!) opened his mouth I wanted to write everything down to save for later. Each of the characters has their own distinct personality and vocab. The voice acting on top of the writing is solid. These things came together in micro-moments where the cinematic sequences were shining bright examples of what can be done in the medium.

Mad Max is a great game. Probably the best open world game I've played in recent memory. It's easily better than Watch Dogs and Shadow of Mordor. The comparison starts to get more interesting when looking at Sleeping Dogs, as one game's strengths might be the other's weaknesses. If Mad Max had a combat/upgrade system more similar to Sleeping Dogs and an improved story, then I think it would've been unstoppable, and competing with the likes of Fallout 4 for GOTY 2015 awards. Hopefully they make a sequel and improve those few areas while adding things like a true stealth mode and more time with Dinki Di. I'd buy that game faster than you can say "Thunderpoon."