A Game I Like (And Collectibles)

Mad Max (2015) by Avalanche Studios

Video games obviously have a huge amount of variety in every aspect, from the ways they tell their stories, to gameplay styles, music and even graphical styles. It’s incredible. Some games can be huge, epic, sprawling adventures like, my favourite game of all time, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”. Some games can be short, self-contained, perfectly paced stories like another of my favourite games of all time, “What Remains Of Edith Finch”. There’s a huge trend though, in the past two decades, of collectibles. We all know them. You are told there’s lots of random things hidden throughout the map, whether that’s an open map or a strictly linear one, and you are incentivized to collect them. Ubisoft has been criticized for this heavily. It's a very repeated sentiment, but people hate how the vast amount of time spent in an open world crafted by Ubisoft is usually spent collecting random items for seemingly no reason at all. It doesn’t progress the story, it doesn’t reward the player, it just feels like fluff. That’s what it is though, it’s fluff. It’s padding to make the game last way longer than it actually does, and it makes players feel like their money was well spent. Luckily, lots of people noticed this and dislike it. It’s a direct contradiction then to say I like Avalanche Studio’s 2015 game Mad Max.

Mad Max was a pretty standard game to say the least. You played as Max Rockatansky and, from a third person perspective, you drove around to places, completed missions, got into fights and leveled yourself up (alongside your car). It was very normal, and a heavy emphasis was built on collecting things. From what I recall, the things didn’t even have much of an actual effect on your experience, it just made a digital number go up. So it must sound weird to say I really enjoyed Mad Max, largely in part due to the moment-to-moment gameplay being fantastic. It felt satisfying to drive around a car with realistic weight on the desert dunes, even if the desert dunes were essentially all you were going to see for the rest of the game’s runtime. The combat felt super crunchy and each swing hit the enemies hard but then this fighting was all you’d be doing if you weren’t driving around. They did try to mix it up with a shielded enemy, but it never strayed into completely brilliant, experimental territories with it. It worked, and that was it. The mission design then? It was fine. You either got into a fight, or had to chase someone in your car, or do both. It was definitely not trying anything particularly new.

Mad Max (2015) by Avalanche Studios

In broader terms then, what happened to Mad Max? Specifically the game. That’s actually where the first issue lies, the title and its peers. Mad Max released in 2015, just several months after the oscar winning, brilliant action epic that is Mad Max: Fury Road. People thought the game was a tie-in, or related to the film, and it wasn’t. It had no connections at all besides being based on the universe, but it wasn’t set IN the universe like Star Wars projects are. People naturally have negative connotations of movie tie-ins, because the vast majority of them have been awful. I could go on a tangent about that, but that would need a separate article. Movie tie-ins are usually pretty bad as they are usually made to cash in on a recognisable IP and rushed out quickly to meet deadlines. People who didn’t fully know what Mad Max was, were immediately drawn away. 

Metal Gear Solid 5 (2015) by Hideo Kojima and Konami

What else then? One word, Kojima. Easily the most recognisable, well known, video game creator of all time was releasing his next project on the exact same day as Mad Max. Hideo Kojima, alongside his highly publicised falling out with game studio Konami, was releasing his next landmark title, Metal Gear Solid V. This thing was massive, and regardless of reviews or availability, it was going to be the thing that consumed the media for at least the near future. Mad Max was basically dead on two fronts. The final front, the reviews, then definitely killed it stone dead. 

The reviews were “fine” and that means it was awful apparently. I want to write something in the future about review scores, but people for some reason only care if a movie or game or album gets an 8/10 or above. Anything lower than that means it’s bad, which is insane and just not the right way to be viewing reviews. I think the right way to be viewing reviews is not at all, and to be forming reviews yourself, but then I have discovered some brilliant pieces of art because of a positive review from some random person on the internet. Anyway, tangent over. The reviews were okay, and that was seen as bad by a large number of people.

Back to my point, did I have one? I think I wanted to share that Mad Max was a pretty cool game whilst it was also painfully average. It was a really fun open world experience while never trying anything particularly adventurous. I really enjoy that game, even if my annoying cynical self shouldn’t have. I also enjoyed the collectible aspect even though it was very much not a thing I usually enjoyed. It just worked. There’s a point in here about how games work, regardless of genre or style, if they are simply made well. I will end it with that. Thank you for reading.