- Free with PS Plus. That's pretty neat.
- It's all right so far, I like driving around the grey post-apocalyptic desert.
- I was too tired last night, but I got a bit of desert roaming in before work this morning.
- This is a lot of fun - I'm really happy I started playing this. It reminds be a bit of Red Faction: Guerrilla, possibly due to the desert setting.
- The game is still fun, but I have started focusing on the main story missions. The area around Pink Eye's fort runs incredibly bad, for some reason. There seems to be frame drops at a constant frequency.
- I've completed 8/15 story missions.
- I've been thinking about why I enjoy this game so much. It's not without its issues. The combat is derived from the Arkham Asylum games, but in this game, your attacks are not guaranteed to hit if you're out of a certain range, and even though I'm halfway through the game, I have still only seen around 4 different enemy action types (normal attack, block, unblockable attack, dodge) and Max's own actions are similarly limited. The car combat is more ambitious, it has targeted harpoon attacks that affect the physics of the cars, different levels of damage and armor in different areas of the car rewards a bit of driving tactics, but so far, it hasn't really been super satisfying. As mentioned earlier, the frame rate is unstable in certain areas, particularly around Pink Eye's fort. Another thing that bugs me: the menus are confusing. I'm constantly trying to figure out where to find my mission objects, where my different car types are, if I can afford an upgrade, etc. I couldn't exactly say how to fix it, since it's a lot of information to present the player with, but it's particularly confusing in this game. So there are some negatives. So why do I find this game so appealing, moreso than most open-world games? Well, first of all, I love the Mad Max universe and this game nails the atmosphere of that world. The desert is beautifully rendered, the topography, lighting, and skyboxes can be downright dramatic, and the rusty wrecks driving around feel perfectly at home in this post-apocalyptic wonderland. I don't love how the characters look, but graphically, everything else is pretty great. Most of the time spent in the world of Mad Max is spent driving across the desert, and driving feels good in this game. It's very simple and arcady, but the car sounds great, feels weighty and is a lot of fun to drag your rusty wreck over sand dunes and cliffs. The physics handles almost anything you throw at it gracefully without blowing up. I guess Avalanche used what they learned from Just Cause and Renegade Ops and are just masters of controlled physics mayhem at this point.
- I've taken down some more bandit camps.
- Taking a day off after 3 weeks of crunching, publisher meetings, and Spilprisen yesterday, I've been cleaning up the desert from bandit scum. I'm feeling mildly queasy right now due to certain areas in the game having that awful unstable frame rate. It's a real pity, because I'm otherwise enjoying this game a whole bunch. I've upgraded my car a lot, and added some yellow flame decals to it, which I assume makes it go faster. :)
- I did a whole bunch of Wasteland Missions. These are less fun than the rest, but unlock some good upgrades.
- I'm back on the story missions. I've completed 9/15 missions.
- Resuming the game with the usual awful frame rate, I got an idea and quit the game and restarted. This seems to have fixed the frame rate. I played for two hours and it ran like it should, around 30 FPS. It reminds me of the Bloodborne bug where the AI would become stupid if the game had been running for too long. I think I should remember to quit and restart games once in a while instead of leaving them running.
- I completed the race missions, including the super frustrating 'Immortal Enemy' mission, where you're racing your big heavy monster of a car through tiny tunnels filled with traps, mines, and other cars.
- The dream wedding cutscene was pretty great, with a dog-headed priest, and the red Kitana-looking woman.
- Completed the game. The ending was dark, which I like, but some of the gameplay sequences, such as the final spear throwing sequence, was pretty dumb. Overall a good game, the frame rate was apparently due to leaving the game running and putting the console on standby. I should remember to shutdown games once in a while.
- I roamed around the desert a bit more.
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Chumbucket2018-04-13
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