Currently sitting at 69% on Metacritic, 2015’s Mad Max game wasn’t exactly a critical darling. The action-adventure open-world RPG developed by Avalanche and published by Warner was released over a year after Fury Road hit the big screen, yet didn’t generate the same level of buzz and prestige as George Miller’s magnum opus did. Now, with Furiosa: A Mad Max Story just a few months away, we thought it would be a good time to look back on the game, because you know what? It’s actually really good.

The Mad Max game’s visuals and lore borrow heavily from Fury Road, with War Boys and Gas Town being shown quite a bit throughout the experience. But Tom Hardy nor Mel Gibson portray Max Rockastansky in this title, making the game feel very much like its own thing and not a straight-up movie tie-in. The premise of the game is quite simple in fact and that is honestly pretty refreshing. Max is in the Plains of Silence and is ambushed by a group of War Boys led by Scarborus Scrotus, the son of Immorten Joe from Fury Road. They leave Max for dead and take his gear and, more importantly, his prized car, the V8 Interceptor. It’s up to Max to build up a new car, the Magnum Opus, and travel the wasteland to reclaim his fabled vehicle. Along the way, he crosses paths with War Lords and other drifters who aid Max on his quest. And that’s it, that’s the story. Very simple, perhaps too simple, but that actually works in its favour I’d argue.

Of course, that’s not the whole gameplay loop. There’s tons of open-world stuff to do here, from taking down camps, unlocking the map via hot air balloons, and participating in races. What’s refreshing is how much fun all of it is and how integrated it feels into the world. The world feels lived in and desolate, despite being a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There’s some minor survival elements too, such as looking for scrap (which acts as your currency), parts for projects, gasoline for your car, and food/water for your health; the latter of which can also be stored in your cantine. Massive storms, as seen in Fury Road, will spawn randomly from time to time as well, forcing you to get back to the car and seek previous scrap that gets pushed in the wind. If you’re in combat during one of these storms, you best get back to your car and if you are already driving, prepare for madness. Driving “off the map” will throw you into a deadly storm, which is their way of doing an invisible wall more organically.

The gameplay is broken up into two distinct types, melee combat and vehicular combat. The hand-to-hand fights are very inspired by the Arkham games, with Max laying down some fisticuffs and timing his parries just right to keep his combo going. Unblockable attacks have to be dodged or can be interrupted by using a precious shotgun shell. Get a high enough combo going and you’ll unlock a rage mode, which does extended damage for a short period. You do these encounters both in story missions, side quests, and open-world missions, such as taking out enemy camps. But it all feels much more grounded and integrated than we’ve seen in other open-world games of late.

The second combat loop, befitting of a Max Mad title, is the car combat. You customize the Magnum Opus with spikes, new engines, and a plethora of other add-ons throughout the game to give you a beast of a car capable of taking on the wasteland’s craziest drivers. The way you fine-tune the car will dictate how well your car does in certain situations, so there is a layer of thought and strategy involved. When you’re fully loaded and in the middle of a giant car battle, it really does feel like one of the chase sequences from Fury Road, with explosive spears blowing cars up, spiky rams flipping metal and War Boys jumping onto your hood to damage you directly. It’s quite the rush and it’s quite fun.

And all of it works well. I’m not so sure why the game was hit with mediocre reviews, but Mad Max is actually really fun. It has great gameplay and world design. It’s a little light on story, but let’s be real, you’re not playing Mad Max for the story; you’re looking for an excuse “to die historic on the Fury Road”. And this game definitely scratches that itch. Considering it came out in 2015, you can likely find a copy at a good sale price these days.