Mad Max  is set in a seemingly barren wasteland blighted by strife, revenge and mad bastards. You’re dropped into the game at Max’s lowest point and very slowly fed shreds of hope. The plot as a whole revolves around the main character, aptly named Mad Max due to his checkered past and all round crazy outlook.

The first playmate you encounter on your strife ridden journey goes by the name of Chumbucket and bares a striking resemblance to quasimodo. He’s your most trusted ally, he’s your most loyal subject, he’s also bloody insane. Whilst that may be the case, he is extremely useful and serves as further comic relief in a game that already does a remarkable job of showing you the funny side of the apocalypse. With the help of good old Chum you set to work on the Magnum Opus, the holy grail of cars, the reason you exist in this wasteland if Chum is to be believed. In Chum’s eyes you’re a prophet sent by the angel Combustion, patron saint of all things car.

Mad Max brings a whole new feel to the Action Adventure genre with the majority of the game being played inside a customisable car, the aforementioned Magnum Opus. You’re equipped with a number of tools which you can utilise in various ways throughout the wasteland. The grappling hook is your first car based weapon and can be used to deadly effect. You’ll begin by tearing down structures named ‘Scarecrows’ made by the roaming warlords, then move swiftly on to pulling enemy snipers from their roosts or even just ripping the whole thing down with the enemy in tow. I doubt that there will ever be a point that you’re stuck for what weapon to use and when to use it.

Whilst the majority of the game is played within your car, Avalanche have adopted an Arkham Asylum style combat for when you do want to get your boots on the ground and crack some skulls. As well as the basic combat, they’ve included a sort of rage system that once built up to maximum allows Max to turn into what can only be described as the hulk of the wasteland. Enemies carry a plethora of hand-held weapons that can be taken by Max and used against them, and Max is also equipped with a shotgun from the get go that you collect ammo for throughout the wasteland.

The thing that drew me to Mad Max to begin with was the advanced upgrade system that is layered across a majority of the content throughout the game. You have upgrades and unlockables for your car, your weapons, your outfit, hell even your beard is upgradeable. As you go through the wasteland blowing up heathens and tearing down their dens you collect griffa tokens, that’s where a weird looking bloke called Griffa comes in. He’ll show up in certain locations as you trek across the map and will allow you to exchange these tokens for yet more upgrades. Rage upgrades, health upgrades, you name it, he’s got it. All that said and done, it’s not as easy as it seems to collect all of these benefits. You’ll have to unlock a large portion of them through lowering threat levels in certain territories. In order to do this you go and speak to the head honcho who will point you towards some task or other and then tell you to get rid of all the crazy bastards roaming around his territory. This includes tearing down scarecrows, capturing oil rigs, chasing down and destroying huge convoys amongst an abundance of other equally insane but amazingly fun things.

The game lacks in the story department, but not significantly. The shortcomings are very quickly pushed to the back of your mind as you’re bombarded with a million other activities to do. I found myself often miles away from where I was supposed to be, in my own little world clearing out the unmentionables from the wasteland. The game does an incredible job of distracting you with shinies and unlockables that you don’t really care that you’ve forgotten about the story entirely.

Mad Max is an open world sandbox game filled to the brim with side-quests and beautiful views. Where I believe it lacks slightly is the main storyline. You’re thrust into a world with so many different things to do that the main story can seem quite inconsequential, but once you’re back on track, however many hours later that may be, it shows itself to be a great work of fiction with an admirable nod to the movie, Fury Road.