Last year I watched the Mad Max franchise revival in the theaters. And loved it. And it seems that world loved it too. The game was launched later, so it was surrounded by expectations. But the developers promptly affirmed that the game is not based on the movie, but in the universe in a broad sense. The protagonist is also Max, but like in the movies, it is a bit different Max from the original movies.

First, the visuals. The movie got a lot of notoriety mostly because its breathtaking visuals. The game… well, I will praise its graphics, however, they are not as impacting as, just as a disclaimer. The game uses a lot of post-processing effects to give a perfect look of a post apocalyptic world. The high speed camera and distortions are also very well employed. In general, the game have a good aesthetic.

It makes a reasonable good use of the franchise. The game have the same desolated atmosphere where the automobiles are essential part of living. However, it also brings a sense that that whole world is, in fact, empty. It’s good to traverse the map in a turbo’ed engine, but doing it often becomes repetitive and boring. It seems that they created the map but did not have enough ideas to fill it with.

The main plot, like most recent open-world games, are paper thin. Max is famous for being quite a guy, the same for most of the people that lives there. The ones that talk are, in fact, annoyingly talkative, like your sidekick master of the technicians. Nothing against him being playing ugly, but he is annoying and pretensions. He says all the time how good he is. He says all the time a lot of things.

In contrast, what could potentially be the major companion disappears after minutes of the gameplay. I’m talking about the dog. Just like the thematic cousin Fallout, there is a dog that we presume that will follow the protagonist all along. But it is not true here. He is put away and rarely shows up. Sad.

If the main story is ok, the same cannot be said about the side missions. The mission givers are super shallow and their tasks are generally repetitive. Not much fun. The collectible items and objectives are divided between the fun and achievable and the boring that you should let it go.

Reducing the threat level is really a nice concept. It reminds me of Shadow of Mordor. Not the same, but similar.

Overall, I had a good time playing it. It was a bit unremarkable, but fun.

Innovative is probably the most common adjective you will read and hear about this game. The gameplay mechanics are very, very simple, but the whole thing is very grounded to the theme.

The game is all about just watching a series of videos. They all are about a woman being interrogated by police officers. Each video is a couple of seconds long of the interrogation sessions. Watching them, one by one, will reveal details about what happened. And that’s it! The player is never asked to actually answer any question. It’s only watching the woman.

Well, to be fair, the game do have an interactive aspect. Each video is cataloged using keywords, but you don’t know which are they. So the player have to search for videos writing in a search box. If there is any videos with that keyword, you can watch it.

Performance of Viva Seifert is amazing. She performs more than one character, but due to the excellent performance and clever writing, you will be amazed by the result. On each piece of video, your understanding about the whole case changes. It reminds me of Agatha Christie’s books, because we jump to conclusions several several times.

The game itself is very engaging. However when I was about 50% of the way, I started to get bored. In order to find all videos, I started to guess obscure words. It was not super super clear so it leads to frustrating moments of try and error. At 85% or so, I was clear about the whole case. I had my conclusions. However, I had to use some online help to see all videos. I did not changed my mind about the mystery, but definitively it is not the way to finish a game.

Great visuals. That is by far the most commented and notorious quality of this touching movie. This film have several common qualities with Cast Away. The main character, because of an disaster, is isolated to the world. Alone, he enters into a routine in order to maintain sanity. But from external eyes, it seems that they are, in fact, becoming lunatic.

This piece is beautiful not only for the eyes, but also for the heart. The main message is tolerance. Tolerance especially towards religion choices. It is very linked to religion theme, while not a sermon.

The main problem of the film is the somewhat long sequence of loneliness. While important to give motive to the religion, it is long enough to make some people sleep.

In the end, I recommend you to watch to reflect. Probably the book that inspired the film is more deep, but this piece is strong enough to provoke some thinking about religion, personal choices and differences.