Can't watch vid right now. 

Open world? All driving? Just Cause with MM skin?

I'm keeping an eye on it, but it depends how heavy the vehicle customisation and levelling is.  I prefer to get more powerful automatically, rather than tinker with variables myself.  I'm not keen on choices for upgrades in games - for example in Arkham Knight, it took me ages to stop fretting about having chosen the shitter of the two offered Batmobile upgrades every time. 

If you can hit an 'ALL' button and do this:

plus have the option to play the game as a linear experience by going from main mission waypoint to main mission waypoint, I'm potentially in.  It does look rather good.

https://youtu.be/CSeudN-hpgk

That vid could be worse. The driving and actual open desert and weather effects look spot on.

Everything else looks as generic as fuck, and the map is way too info heavy for my liking.

Fighting looks to be batman clone, which is fine, I guess. Didn't see any of the shooting, if there's any.

Farcry on crack. Not full on crack. Disampointer.

Plus. Plus. 

That's where I was coming from.

Hence: Disampointered.

So the reviews are beginning to come in and they are really quite positive. Apparently the open world is great and the car combat in particular is really good. In fact, some reviews have mentioned how the game has been a bit harshly done by in regards to a lack of advertising, holdong back review code and releasing alongside mgs 5!

It'll be cheap as chips when I get round to it, great move guys.

Postie came late! Woop!

I'm just over an hour in, a few story missions under my belt, I think I've cleared the first wee area, and I've had a decent amount of time driving and fighting. My first thoughts? Hmmm...

...it's fucking ace fun. The feel of the car, so far, is great, very much what you'd expect for a gas-guzzling beast on dust tracks in a fun action game. The fighting is solid, chunky, thumping, satisfying stuff. It's not a million miles from Arkham Assylum, and thankfully Max feels solidly rooted in the middle of a brawl, not the ridiculous Thor's-hammer ricocheting of Arkham Knight's unsatisfying combat. So far Max is more akin to stand-offish Mel of 2 rather than the unhinged Tom of Fury Road, but that's fine. Chumbucket is vocal enough to enjoy the stylised Milleresque dialogue but not so vocal as to be annoying.

Other things that I'm liking; the (admittedly now commonplace but still a good thing) slo-mo on the final enemy of any group, the look of the world through your binoculars, the fire effects, the sound through your controller of a jerry can as you put it in the back of your car, the notification that you've found all the loot in a given area, footprints in the sand, fleeting glimpses of enemies in the darkness, the fire effects, the feel of kicking a door open, Chumbucket's scurrying animations as he gets thrown around the back of your car, did I mention the fire effects...?

For those asking about vehicle upgrades, so far the story is only unlocking one bit at a time. I'm guessing that, as it goes on, it'll spread out, so you can pick, but basically each aspect (shields, harpoon, thunderpoons, engine, armour and so on) has a linear five or six stage upgrade system, and it doesn't appear as though anything will be reliant on anything else, but I may be wrong.

I'm off to take the dog out for a play, then get back on this.

This looks amazing for a movie tie in.

In that case I have high hopes.
Review scores in yet?

Although not a Fury Road tie-in, so far it looks and feels more like Fury Road than any of the other three films.

Just also unlocked the Max upgrades, similar thing to the vehicle; various categories, each with about six levels.

Max has 10 different upgrade categories, the Magnum Opus has 18.  It looks like the plot pretty much will be 'make Max and car betterer at fighting the bad men you're finding more and more of'.  This is fine

It's not disappointing.

For those interested in such things, this has a photo mode which, like the one given to The Order 1886 in a later patch, allows you to select different filters, and remove the HUD, not just for photos but for gameplay too.

There could be some nifty videos made of this.

For balance, though, I feel I should point out that there isn't much by way of HUD optimisation. Subtitles on or off, tutorial on or off, entire HUD on or off. I wouldn't mind being able to switch on and off different elements of the HUD, and/or tinker with its transparency.  As quibbles go, though, it's a minor one.