SD on 30/12/2015 at 21:48
I notice the PC version is on sale at the moment, two thirds off in a couple of places. The odd disparity between critic reviews (73%) and Steam user reviews (91%) makes me hesitate slightly, but on the basis that gamers actually pay for their games (presumably the devs didn't bribe or fuck the right people to get the really good reviews) I'm erring towards getting it.
WingedKagouti on 30/12/2015 at 22:06
There are likely a couple of factors for this. A critic score of 70-80% is generally "Ok game, doesn't do anything spectacular, only get it at AAA price if gameplay and theme are what you've dreamed of in years." Mad Max is an open world sandbox game, in an industry where that type of gameplay has been flooding the market for the last couple of years.
The Steam user recommendation score basically just how big a percentage of people who gave a thumbs up out of all people who rated it. And the only two ratings are thumbs up or down. There's little nuance in that score other than "x% of people who got, played and rated this game think others would enjoy it as well". The number of people in who got the game in the first place may have been affected by the review score, thus less people who wouldn't enjoy it in the first place would get it. This in turn would mean fewer people leaving a Not Recommended review.
nicked on 31/12/2015 at 06:43
Having a basic understanding of sociology - much more important than review scores! :D
henke on 31/12/2015 at 11:40
Yeah, you can't really compare a metascore with Steam's Thumbs Up/Down ratio. I'd give it a thumbs up on Steam as well, but I wouldn't give it more than a 7 or 8 out of 10 score. On (
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mad-max) metacritic the critics are giving it 73% and it has a user score of 7.7, so it's not so far off.
In general I can see why this game gets more love from the players though. The devs haven't done anything to really tick off the playerbase, and it's somewhat of an underdog, having been released on the same day as the biggest game of the year, in a year of frankly bigger and better open world action games, and it's not even Avalanche's most anticipated release this year, coming out just a couple months before Just Cause 3. It's bound to get more support than hate from the players. Who's gonna wanna pick on little ol' Mad Max? He's already down in the dumps!
SD on 5/4/2016 at 17:46
I did buy this in the end, and must say I am enjoying it.
Max's world looks absolutely beautiful, the developers really nailed the feel of the wasteland, and it runs like a charm, even on my modest machine. Immersion is the overwhelming quality I tend to look for in any game, and this one certainly delivers for me on that score.
Where most open world games seem to put an emphasis on shoot outs, I really appreciate the different path this one takes.
On the downside it feels a bit grindy at times, but no more so than a Far Cry title.
All things considered I find the lukewarm professional reviews a little difficult to comprehend. What on earth are these people playing that would mark this title out as a 70%er?!
henke on 5/4/2016 at 18:24
Considering that critics play a lot of games, when they're playing Mad Max I imagine that most of them feel they're playing something they've played many times before. As did I. Mad Max is a competent game, but it doesn't really do anything we haven't seen before, nor does the story elevate it above averageness. 7/10 is pretty spot-on, I'd say.
faetal on 5/4/2016 at 20:00
My bugbear was that it felt too much like a Shadows of Mordor re-skin, but I still enjoyed the bit I played.
WingedKagouti on 6/4/2016 at 05:53
Only gamers (and publishers) consider 70% "below average" instead of "noticably above average but far from perfect".
Malf on 25/7/2016 at 08:56
So I picked this up dirt cheap on Friday thanks to Savygamer, and between this and Rimworld, well, that was my weekend (with a short break for some TTLG antics in GTAV).
And I really like it.
It probably helps that I've picked it up at a time when there's nothing really shiny on the horizon that could compete with it for my attention. Yes, it's an open-world-by-the-numbers game, but as henke says, it captures just enough of the spirit of the movies to stand out, and as opposed to other games with a focus on driving and combat (GTA, I'm looking at you), it makes the combination of both a pleasure to play with.
I have some personal bugbears with it, but that's down to mis-steps in theme and character representation.
Mad Max 2 is a formative film for me, one I keenly remember from my early years, and the film that opened me up to the wonderfully weird world of Antipodean cinema, as well as playing on one of the over-arching fears of my childhood, "What will happen if the bombs drop?"
While they've tried to keep some of that Australian weirdness, the Americanisation of things is noticeable and out of place. And Max speaks too damn much. I'm not even that far in and he's already said more than he did in the entirety of Fury Road.
I suppose budgetary and geographical constraints may have limited access to good Aussie talent, and I suspect there's probably some corporate buttfuckery involved along the lines of "Yeah, but we need to make it easier for our North American audience to relate to". But it grates a bit.
Still, the world building is absolutely superb, and when they get going, the car battles are straight out of the movies. Not quite to the level of sheer spectacle from Fury Road, but as near as you can reasonably expect a triple-A game to get.
And dat sand.
Excellent sand. Gritty sand. Dusty sand. Shifting sand. Dry sand. Stormy sand.
Ginormous piles of the stuff everywhere, and you can almost feel the physical exertion when Max is slogging through the desert off road, as the stuff flows around his feet and robs him of traction.
Not sure I'll do absolutely everything there is to do mind you. It looks like they've taken the same approach to open world as they did with Just Cause 2, and simply made their world significantly larger than that of the nearest competitor.
Still, it does give the game excellent longevity and means it'll probably stay installed long after I complete the main story just so I can go back for the occasional quick blast.
