Mad Max Dev Takes Offense At 'Nonsense' Criticism Of The 2015 Video Game

Avalanche are the one of my favorite developers. Been as such since I played the first Just Cause on the OG Xbox. The checked out the 360's next Gen version there after.

What he says here lines up with a lot of the same issues I heard about movie tie in games back when pretty much every movie got one.

I am guilty of having never played their Mad Max. I may fix this after I finish my first run of Fallout New Vegas.

Mad Max was great fun. I loved the game. HK’s games are usually full of nonsense, Avalanche did a good job imo.

I've only heard good things about this game. I own it but haven't given it a shot yet.

@themightyant
Totally agree. I put 10 hours into it when I realised just how repetetive and open-worldy (a derogatory term in my lexicon) this game is. Needless to say, I never finished it.

I played it on release and ignored the reviews. I’m so glad I did. Had a blast back then and still go back to it. Brilliant game and buckets of fun.

Mad Max had it's fair share of letdown no doubt but it was an amazing game. I really liked the story and driving around the wasteland was really fun. But the game really went under the radar. I like Kojima but DS was a huge letdown for me. So Miller maybe thinking of the wrong team for this.

Wow, this really explains why all the open-world stuff in this game felt so unnecessary. There are so many systems you can ignore completely and have no trouble at all getting through the main story

WB made poor business decisions in publishing a video game?! I find that hard to believe. So, Christofer, how's that GAAS Hogwarts game coming along? Got enough hooks for the dailies yet?

Poor guy.

Avalanche is a great studio, and Mad Max is definitely underrated.

@gollumb82 @themightyant I feel that older games like this get an unfair lens put on them in that regard. Remember that the "open world drudgery" was once new and unique and exciting to have a hub and go questing out on your own with no hand holding was once a new and uniquely freeing, addicting experience in games. Then companies decided to annualize it and bloat it and connect it to dlc and it became bloated boring and stale. I haven't the patience for it today, but when it was new in the PS360 era, you could get lost in trying to 100% all that stuff. The came came from the era it was still fun and exciting design rather than boring and stale.

Whenever people are talking about underrated games Mad Max nearly always comes up, and for good reason. I really enjoyed it.

it was clear icons off a map Ubisoft style.

I didnt like it

It was OK - I wouldn't say it was essential or a Must Play. It had its moments and could be Fun, but also had some repetitive and dull activities/missions that a LOT of Open World games do. The usual requirement of getting 'resources' to level up added to the 'grind' as well.

It wasn't terrible either but it also never got any XB1X support so is stuck with the XB1 limitations. That being said, its certainly been on sale for very little money and I think its a good solid game (6 or 7/10) - just not an essential must play 10/10 game.

It was a really good game at the time, with some good ideas. I liked it but never finished it.

Miller is entitled to his opinion, if he wasn’t happy with it that’s fair enough. It didn’t sound like he was being particularly rude. Maybe I would feel differently if I had made the game, but it seemed like quite a defensive response.

@themightyant Sort of, but it was developed during the height of it when it was open world gold rush period before release fatigue had really made it public yet. It sort of released WITH the wave that made everyone tired of it.

Still, Hogwarts proves that Avalanche knows what it's doing with open world, where you can have your markers and still make it engaging, so I'd lean toward trusting their concepts barring outside interference (WB.......) A top 10 single player game for over a year is a heck of a thing.

It break my heart to hear the devs talking about dlc we could had have if only the publisher had the ghoats to release it , i have purchased the game day one and never felt let down by the experience it was a great game even if in my opinion the story felt short.

I’ll never get over this game’s mistreatment. Releasing alongside MGSV was nothing short of complete moronic arrogance and further proves that WB are the worst publisher going today. Yes, worse than EA, Ubi or Take-Two… Well okay I’m not so sure about that last one after recent events.

I’m even more sad now because I didn’t know about the cut dlc. This game released, at least in my memory, super polished. And it kinda still proves to me that, releasing a finished quality product doesn’t mean much and certainly not if you release at a terrible time. I’m glad it eventually got recognition and sympathy in the end.

I loved it. I finished it twice on PS4 & Xbox—an underrated but divisive game.

@NEStalgia That's a different Avalanche studio I think. Could be wrong but I believe they are separate companies. Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. It's all opinions at the end of the day but as a Mad Max fan in general, I thoroughly enjoyed the game and finished most of the gameplay/quest elements. I'm envious of those that got to do it with fps boost on Xbox. I like recent Kojima games too but I don't want a Mad Max game by him.

Mad Max is very underrated, I always recommend it to people

@TJ81 Wow, you're right, I never actually knew that, all this time I thought Hogwarts was made by the Just Cause and Mad Max guys. Avalanche Software and Avalanche Studios, two different things, both published by WB, but the OTHER Avalanche is owned by WB and this one is not. I never, ever realized that!

I can't fathom how bizzarre a Mad Max game by Kojima would be. It's not something I want to have to witness

I bought the game but didn't play it much, not coz I didn't like it. It might be because I got a PS4 around the same time and I bought the game on PC. So I've been spending most of my time on the PS4. And I bought a few PS3 games too that I never got around to playing because of the PS4. I still haven't played those last few games I bought on PS3.

@NEStalgia it is a bit confusing, them having similar names. I could easily get them mixed up.

The game was great. Every once in a while, I boot it up back and replay it. Sad that it will never get a sequel

I thought it was good, but the budget really showed on the boss fights. They were all copy and paste.

Great game! Not many sequels I really want, but this and Amalur are at the very top.

I love DLC but not a fan of devs acting like it is a crutch. Rather than they left out good DLC what about what actually went into the game? I understand there was executive meddling but if they had all this great content that was left out? Why was it left out? If they were coming up with content during development then imo it should have gone into the game.

@TJ81 Wait, what? Next, you'll be telling us that there are two game studios named Monolith.

Regarding open-world fatigue: one thing that's neat about Mad Max is that you don't have to spend much time on open-world busywork. Max is already pretty powerful from the start, and the Batman-like combat isn't all that difficult, so you could probably get to the end in 10 hours if you ignore all the side stuff.

For what it's worth, this game held my interest long enough for me to do the majority of the side content anyway, but I haven't played all that many open-world games (yet)!

PS: Side note: I had a lot of fun blowing things up in Just Cause 3, another Avalanche game from the same year(!), but that one artificially gates all of the story content and forces you to clear a certain percentage of fluff from the map. That one started to overstay its welcome, unfortunately.

Glad he hit back. Unwarranted criticism. Most licensed games are trash. This was a genuinely good game. It’s what let me know their hogwarts game probably wasn’t going to be a dumpster fire.

@NEStalgia I just made the same mistake. wtf. Now I have no idea what is what anymore 😆

THIS:
"...cancelled a bunch of awesome DLC that was just sitting there waiting to be released..."
is what is wrong with gaming nowadays!
If DLC is made BEFORE the game is out, either release it WITH the game as a full game or let it be free!
Do NOT charge for already completed DLC!

This is an amazing game. Even better at 120fps on the series X. Loved it so much I have it on my steam deck as well to play on the go.

It could be repetitive and empty at times, but I highly enjoyed the game. The vehicle combat was immensely fun and the sand storms were great.

FYI: This game is on Steam and it runs flawlessly in the Steam Deck. It's a perfect game for on the go or trips.

My take was the game was interesting, at first but I just got bored and stopped playing.