Where’s Naughty Dog When You Need Them
Although Nick Wanserski found himself enjoying the sights and stunts of Avalanche Studios’ Mad Max, he struggled with the game’s inherent incongruity. Avalanche’s Max is just as misanthropic as his filmic counterpart, Nick argued, but the chore-filled open-world nature of the game forces him to constantly, willingly insert himself into the lives of struggling wastelanders. In a rare Gameological Level 2 appearance, HobbesMkii agreed and explained why a more straightforward action game with a focused story would be a better fit for Max:
It seems like a Mad Max game is crying out to be more of a set-piece-driven narrative than an open world. We have a really good open-world Mad Max adaptation already: it’s called Fallout, and it’s sort of a big deal.
With a series of set pieces, you could tell a real Max narrative, where survival is the imperative, as well as being able to set up the sort of grandiose action the Miller films are famous for: leaping between moving vehicles, gun-play, brutal fights, etc.
There was a commentary a while back that argued, outside of the first movie, Max has always been a side character in his own stories. Road Warrior, Thunderdome, and Fury Road all tell stories about communities and their citizens that Max happens to help. Max himself is a static character. He is permanently scarred by his family’s death, his only humanity found in his reluctant altruism.
But while that would seem good for an open world, it doesn’t actually make sense in the Max mythos to give Max a level of agency he doesn’t ever possess. At no point in Road Warrior, Thunderdome, or Fury Road does Max pause in his adventure to go off and do the sort of thing we see in open-world games—hoarding currency, finding a new gun, etc. Instead, Max gets carried along by events—he gets chased by the War Boyz, he gets captured, he’s made into Nux’s blood bag, he escapes but is forced to exchange his help for Furiosa’s, etc. Same thing in the other two films, where he has no intention of helping anyone until he’s forced into it by circumstance, leading to a massive adventure. Max’s adventures always railroad him into a course of action. An open-world game tacitly requires you to be able to stop, go out, dick around, and come back to a community that hasn’t moved forward in your absence because you, the player, are the driver of all action. But the movies are about how much Max doesn’t really drive the action. The most he can do is steer it toward justice.
Have It Your Way
Yesterday, Patrick Lee delivered his review of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, a spinoff of Nintendo’s series of life-in-a-town-with-anthropomorphic-animals simulators that focuses strictly on creation and interior decoration. Pat was particularly struck by the game’s lack of judgment, which he found to be an open invitation for unadulterated, playful creativity. For ItsTheShadsy, this gutting of Animal Crossing’s menial tasks make Happy Home Designer sound far more appealing:
Having never been interested in Animal Crossing, because of its seemingly Farmville-like chores, and having loved the decorating and design part of The Sims, this is extremely appealing to me.
Personalization has always been my favorite aspect of simulation games. There’s certainly lots of fun in tinkering with an ecosystem or model, but I always found the most enjoyment in being given reign to put a personal stamp on a simulation. Take Capitalism Plus. It’s an exceptional, rewarding simulation, but it plays like being an accountant for a large business. You can choose products and locations and names and such, but it never feels like you have much freedom to make it your own. There’s so much focus on the systems that it never lets you have the fun part.