Shadow and Flame with Magik

I originally got Mad Max for free through PS+ back in April 2018.  That was before I was committing to sampling each game, or I had plans to commit but never got around to it.  If I recall correctly, it was because I was playing another main game and did not not want to start another open world game at that time.

I did play Trackmania Turbo that month and Walker Dennis and I really took to that game.  I eventually got around to playing Q*Bert Rebooted a few months ago.  I have yet to play In Space We Brawl and 99 Vidas, and I sort of forgot I had those games.

Besides knowing Mad Max is a trilogy and the first movie brought Mel Gibson to the world, and the third film gave us the term “Thunderdome,” I do not have any real connection to the film franchise.  I heard the combat was akin to the Batman Arkham games so I knew I could handle that aspect of the game.

I attempted to watch the first movie through the Philo app but Walker Dennis lost interest in it almost immediately so I could not get a proper feel for the movie.  It definitely did not start the way I was expecting but I really need to get a moment to watch the film properly.

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Dave from PlayStation Access, with Rob, made this video about the seven things we should do in the game and I have done all of these things!

I was disappointed they did not make more videos regarding the game but while looking for the above video, I found the below video!

So I have to watch this later!

I really like these types of videos that PlayStation Access makes where they take open world games and try to make a complete lap of the map.  That is what I like to do with games like Fallout 3 and 4 and Spider-Man.  Just find the edges and make one full lap and see what happens.  If I ever beat GTAV, I should do it there as well.

.  .  .

While looking over the Double Discount sale that is happening through the PlayStation Store, I saw I already own Mad Max and I was in a mood to start a new game.  Plus, I like to look at the deals and if I see a game I own, but have not played, I like to move that game up the list to play it next.  That is how I rediscovered Q*Bert Rebooted.

Apparently Mad Max is under five dollars, and it is totally worth it at that price!

I simply have been enjoying myself so much during this past weekend where if I could manage it, I was playing the game.  I also was staying up way to late getting side quests and scavenging locations.

I found make a waypoint, and then if I came across anything on my way there, I would allow myself to get crazy distracted and try to eliminate everything on my path.  I would try to at least get one story mission completed more gaming session.

I recently earned the trophy for completing the second act, of five facts, so I am almost half way through the main story.  Trophy wise, I have completed 20% of the game.

As always, I have been using PlayStationTrophies.org when I want to look at trophies :

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/mad-max/guide/

I haven’t gotten stuck until I got to Pink Eye’s stronghold.  I was supposed to expose the barrels of the catapults and I could not figure out how to do that.  It was also past midnight so I might not have been controlling the car’s harpoon well enough.  It kept trying to lock onto people and not the item on the back of the catapult.  So I found out how to do that and spent another 30 minutes liberating the stronghold.

I am playing the game way too much but loving every minute of it!  I had to get the word out on how great the game is!  The characters are great, the driving could be a tad better, but I could also upgrade the tires more too.  I bought one tire upgrade but did not see much improvement but maybe I need to invest in more upgrades.

Speaking of upgrades, I was reminded I read this point months ago (most likely in April 2018) and it did not make as much sense until I started playing it but if you want the V8 as quickly as possible, you should follow CloNe817’s advice here :

So helpful!  I have already played a bunch before finding my Word document that contained the information but I am going to now do this as roleplaying as Max to get to his car immediately is something I should have already felt compelled to do.  He has been making no secret of his desires so I should be listening to him.

As I have been doing plenty of upgrading, I have decided to do seek out the scrap crew components so that I am earning scrap while not playing the game, so I have to do that for Jeet, Gut Gash, and Pink Eye, then I will start doing the main missions again, while keeping an eye open on side activities to do along the way.

Once I have the scrap crews, I also have to create the Dog and Buggy Project at both Gut Gash and Pink Eye’s strongholds.  I cannot get “Gut Gash” to stick in my head, he is always the other guy in my mind.  I am hoping typing his name so much keeps it a thing in my head.

I want to say I have defeated Rim Jobbie already, as I really wanted a silver or black car, and it was a tough fight but I wish I kept my eye on the actual difficulty of it.  Last night, I realized all of the camps actually have names, as I could not find an insignia at all.

Thanks to YouTuber SporksAreGoodForYou for making such a good video and having a handy time stamp of where the collectibles were.  I needed Insignia # 2 at the Sand Shifter Camp.  I looked everywhere but could not find it over the ledge.  So now I am looking all over the camps now for Insignias that are just off the walking path.

Reading his description, he writes the project piece is for the Survey Crew and not the Scrap Crew, so hopefully he miswrote that as I would have sworn I went to Jeet’s stronghold, found the Scrap Crew table and added all of those locations to my map.  As I rather have the Scrap Crew looking for scrap over having the Survey Crew finding all of the Scavenging locations for me as I am coming across those just find on my own.

I guess I will find out when I grab the third piece tonight.  It needs to be done either way if I want to get the trophy for completing all projects.

There is a glitch trophy, Up to the Task, with the game only registering 190 of the 191 Scavenging locations so I was probably never going to get that trophy anyway, so that frees up my mind of that goal, so I can just play the game.  Looking at the 144 non-repeating challenges (which the 191 is simply one of those), I doubt I would be able to get all of those accomplished so even without the glitch, I would be up against a wall.  The challenges I have done have all been organically achieved by playing the game, and that is my real goal.  I do want enough challenges completed so I can earn the Road Warrior trophy of reaching that rank.  I did waste several Griffa Tokens on other upgrades.  I now know that for every ten challenges, I can upgrade my legend rank, so that is my new focus in terms of leveling.  I would have had to spend all of my tokens before leaving him so the ones I “wasted” would have had to be spent regardless.  So whenever I see that yellow challenge completion bar fill up, I try to stop to see if that was my tenth one or not.

So I am going to create those three scrap crews projects, along with the dog/buggy project, which will count as two projects which is a trophy per stronghold.  Once I have Pink Eye’s scrap crew, I will follow the main mission of going to Deep Friah’s stronghold and progress with the game (and then get their scrap crew up and running).

It takes a while to get even a thousand scraps and there is a trophy for maintaining 5,000 scrap and another for having 10,000 scrap on my person.

I have to upgrade my Thunderpoon as that seems like a super useful car cannon and would help with dealing with the convoys.

I just looked at a picture of Rim Jobbie and I definitely defeated him.

It does appear I will have to get the Wild Hunt car body in Reek Hills in Gut Gash’s stronghold so I will do that before I get back into the main mission.

I imagine the Speed Demon is something I unlock through a race of the main story so that should be all of the prep work I will require.  I have definitely played more than four hours but the trophy guide implies the platinum is 50-75 hours so I have plenty of time to drive in the official Mad Max V8 Interceptor, which I am sure for legal reasons, they had to call it, Wild Hunt.

At some point, I have to build two items for Deep Friah, which one will be the dog/buggy project and the other will be the scrap crew, so once I have access to that stronghold, I will stop the game again to overthrow those three bases to get the parts.

I have already successfully completed two wasteland missions, so I can complete a third one before going back into the main mission.  CloNe817 recommends Hope’s “In the Buzzard’s Belly” and Chum’s “As the Wrench Turns” so I could do those two.

I like that Hope character, she has a kid, and Max seems to like her too.  Hopefully that can end well for everyone involved.

I should probably take steps to upgrade the Thunderpoon as it sounds pretty handy to have, and a few challenges are connected to it as well.

Then as it reads in the V8 guide, it sounds like the game is close to over as well which seems fast with just starting Act III but that could be possible with a slow burn of the first two acts, to then the last three move rapid style.  Though I would not really categorize the story as being slow, at all, it really is moving at a great pace.

I am excited to read about the game, and writing about the game, and it is just an overall great game and it is currently only five dollars and it is definitely worth that price.

I was reading that Mafia III has a similar style and I might just add as my next game to play, or at the very least, sample it.

Just so I have a handy personal guide for my own reference (and to cross off!)

Collect Parts and Build Scrap Crews for : Jeet, Gut Gash, Pink Eye, and eventually, Deep Friah
Build Dog/Buggy projects for Gut Gash and Pink Eye, and eventually Deep Friah
Before moving back to Pink Eye, get the Wild Hunt body out of Gut Gash’s territory
Complete Wasteland Mission : In the Buzzards Belly (Hope)
Complete Wasteland Mission : As the Wrench Turns (Chumbucket)
Upgrade the Thunderpoon to 50%
Start Main Missions Again

Which seems super possible and should not take more than a few hours of prep time.

I keep forgetting to write about how adorable Dinki-Di is in this game!  I think he so named as that is the name of the dog food found in the game and he is the same breed of dog.  I do wish there was a way to pet Dinki-Di in the game, that would be nice, so I have to pretend like rolling into him is petting him with R1.  I also feel super horrible when the buggy gets damaged or rolls over a mine and I have to quick repair the buggy to get rid of all of the fire.

We get him pretty early on, and I wanted to make sure he was okay.  Also early on, something bad happens and I thought we lost him but it turns out he was fine as he is one tough pup.

.  .  .

Quick update and then I will post this article!

Turns out, I have not fought Rim Jobbie, he is a four out of five difficulty, so hopefully I can beat him but he is next on my list.

Also, I did have Dog’s bed already made at Gut Gash’s stronghold, I just overlooked him.  I was only one item away from completing the Scrap Crew so I was able to accomplish that.

I had to float up in three different hot air balloons before finally coming across Rim Jobbie’s base, but I saved my game right at the entrance so this should be a fight!

SporksAreGoodForYou’s video description is completely correct, that was a third of the piece for Jeet’s Scavanger Project as I had already built the Scrap Crew project and did not remember it.

I also spent the 900 scrap to upgrade the Thunderpoon to 25% damage, and I will have to knock down the threat level in Deep Friah’s territory (I believe) before I can upgrade it to 50%.

Turns out, I already owned the Wild Hunt as I let Walker Dennis pick the first car body and it was the one that looked the most like KITT, so that saved me a step.

So I have to successfully beat Rim Jobbie, go to Pink Eye’s stronghold, learn the location of all three of her Scrap Crew components, obtain those components – probably have to take out some camps, I am imagining, complete those two Wasteland Missions, and then I get back into the Main Story again!  Should be great time!

From what I saw on the Speed Demon archangel tab (the name of the fancy cars Chum can make), I have the Jack and I am the majority of the way to the various other cars.  The Speed Demon upgrades all seemed to be scrap that I could afford but the one missing element was Rim Jobbie’s paint job so once I have that, I might be able to drive around with a V6 version of the official Mad Max car!

If all I have to do is take out all of the scarecrows and snipers in The Dump territory, that should not take that long, like 15 minutes tops, so I might as well do that too.

Plus, anything else that comes along like minefield missions and things to destroy.  I need to take on another convoy to see how I fare now that I have a supped up cannon.  I still am not sure how I get additional ammo for it as I started with ten and currently down to six with no idea how I even started with ten.  From what I found through some Steam community forums, ammo for the Thunderpoon is located in scavenging locations and from the armory in strongholds.

I also completed a few more challenges.  Something else I am doing is loading up the Legends tab with each new game session and see what my next five challenges are and be aware of those as I play that night.  I gained two additional levels so I believe I just need one more before I reached another tenth rank and I can find Griffa and unlock the next legend rank and upgrade a slew of other abilities.

No additional trophies for me but I am also pausing the momentum of the game to better prep myself going forward, so I am not expecting to earn any for a few nights as well.

.  .  .

Walker Dennis finally convinced me to play Roblox with him and one of the levels I sought out was a Mad Max one, so now whenever he sees me playing my game, he wants me to play Roblox with him.  Philo finally got the 11th season of Doctor Who again, and our connection to the app works like a dream again, so we have been catching up with the 13th Doctor and I have been really enjoying Jodie Whittaker’s portrayal of the Doctor.  We have two more proper episodes before the New Years Special so I am really looking forward to that special as I heard they finally leaned into the history of the show again.  I have enjoyed how they seem to like filming in actual locations but every other episode is a clear set or enclosed location, like I can feel Production trying to stretch the budget.

He is currently obsess with this Granny mission so if you ever play that mission, you will probably find us in there.  JackalsIII is my name there if you want to add me as a friend.

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We also started our subscription to Disney+ as it was only seven dollars and I feel like we already got our moneys worth with all that is already on there.  The Captain America films were there, all three X-Men cartoons are there (The Animated Series, Evolution, and Wolverine and the X-Men), Black Cauldron and Bambi are also on there, and I have been wanting to watch Bambi since finishing those two episodes of Disney Story Origins Podcast.

http://www.disneystoryoriginspodcast.com/

I wanted to listen to the Black Cauldron episodes, as well, but I have not seen the film so once I see that, I can listen to those episodes.  Then I would have heard all of the episodes and it seems he is on another hiatus so that should time out perfectly.

Captain Marvel is also on there, as well as the live action Dumbo (and proper Dumbo), so we have plans galore for watching the heck out of this service.

101 Dalmatians is on there as well, which we wanted to show that film to Walker Dennis when we came across a dalmatian and realized he has not seen so many Disney animated films.  So that is going to change real soon!

The Great Mouse Detective is up there as well!

I was going to choose Captain America or his shield as my profile picture but they did not have Cap, so I had to go with Eeyore and I am pretty happy with the choice.  My wife went with Ariel and Walker Dennis, of course, picked Spider-Man.

I had to go pretty down the list for Eeyore but once I found him, I was so happy to pick him but I am sure the path to get to him would not go unnoticed by him.

oh, and Darkwing Duck is on there as well, so I am pretty happy about this entire investment!

I am glad we did not wait until Falcon and the Winter Soldier debuted, as it is still scheduled for Fall 2020.