The developers of the action-packed party title Saints Row wanted to take the party to the next level, and their solution was Agents of Mayhem. AoM takes the delicious high-level action to a new level of crazy and lets you take control of a agent of your choosing from an interesting gang of misfits and head out into the open-world to smash Doctor Babylon and his minions in colorful and amazing ways.
Our agents are located in a futuristic version of the South Korean capital of Seoul with an emphasis on strong colors. The city is overflowing with neon and huge billboards with nonsensical commercials glowing in the dark and it certainly gives Agents of Mayhem its own atmospheric feeling. The graphics are som sort of weird version of cellshading and reminds of Borderlands visual feeling but with its own personal touch. It looks great at certain times and absolutely fits the games feeling.
Get ready to unleash some mayhem and chaos in a future version of Seoul.
One of the absolute best gameplay features of Agents of Mayhem is the ability to quickly switch between the three different agents you choose to take on a mission. Even in the most intense action sequences, you can switch to someone who fits better for a certain kind of enemy or challenge and let the others recharge for a while. The ability to choose agent creates a challenging and dynamic freedom of choice in how to compose your assassinations. It is of utmost importance that you bring a good combination of agents in each mission, and then experiment with their abilities to achieve ultimate deadly success.
Intensive action with tired stereotypes
The three initial agents you get control of in Agents of Mayhem: Fortune, Hollywood and Hardtack.
We get a total rooster of 12 agents to play with and they all come with their distinct personalities and abilities, like for example the air pirate Daisy or the crime boss Kingpin. The game mechanics lacks some imagination where you have your set amount of abilities and then you also have an ultimate ability, which in AoM is of course called your mayhem ability and just like in other games lets you release total chaos upon your foes. All RPG players out there probably recognize this approach and its something that has been used in everything from Overwatch to League of Legends. While this approach is fun and works it is a system that has been somewhat overused in games in my opinion.
You can control 3 of these 12 agents when you start the game and you have to work hard doing special side mission to unlock the other agents. They all bring something new to the table in terms of abilties and personalities, but in many cases the characters become to cliche and almost feel forced to deliver "funny" lines every other second. The humor is very over the top with extremely cheeky oneliners, but considering that the whole idea and feeling of the game is to not take things to serious and to just have fun I think the narrative works.
The crazy, chaos-filled mayhem battles can become repetitive
The parodic evil Doctor Babylon becomes a plague in our life's from the very first moment we meet him.
While the action-packed and fast moving combat is just as fun as you would think it is it does suffer from feeling repetitive. Your often killing large hordes of visually similar enemies one after the other in exactly the same way for minutes and many of the missions in AoM feel very uninspiring in their goals. Considering the games strong focus on chaos, mayhem and action gameplay I would personally want to see more innovation in the combat system, but the diversified cast of agents at least help.
You buy this game for insane, ridiculous and psychopathic chaos - and that's what your gonna get.
Beautiful on the surface - a little empty under its shell
One of the best things about this game are the endless supply of new gadgets that you can acquire. The weapons and gear is creative and you can customize your characters looks to your hearts content. The exploration is fun, but nothing extraordinary and I do think that they could have created a more exploration-prone Seoul for us to search through. Don't get me wrong, the city looks great, but it often feels like an empty shell without any real "city pulse" that we always find in titles like GTA and you will mostly just want to get to your objectives for the next fight.
To the above criticism can be added a list of small, annoying technical problems. Our characters will tend to "stick" on the edges and ledges in the heat of battle, which could be crucial for its outcome. A couple of times I also fell right through the game world and used the pop-up menu to cancel the mission and play it all over again. Camera angles can also cause problems and specifically the vehicle mechanics lose some of my gaming joy by a low-hanging camera that lies a little too close and blocks the field of view.
A generously added color palette paints Seoul in imaginative and beautiful colors.
Agents of Mayhem shows their best side when we follow the main story-line and get to fight some of the more interesting villains. The game flows beautifully between cut-scenes and combat and the animations look crisp and great. Weapons create beautiful firework shows and Seoul is more vibrant than ever before. Volition have, just like in Saints Row, created a seamless gameplay experience that feels like an orchestra of chaos that even V would be envy off.
Final judgement
Not all games need "depth", some can just be chaotically fun.
Agents of Mayhem never really goes into anything to deep, but still manages to entertain with cruel, brutal action, bit of fun humor and a rare and daring color and effect bombardment. Short charging times, uncomplicated character handling and a constant proximity to the middle of the battle's heat also makes the game have a pleasant sense of accessibility around itself. The game is drawn down a bit with its faults, certainly, but do you want to throw yourself down on the couch and kick some butt after a day at work or school, there are quite a few hours of entertainment to enjoy in Agents of Mayhem.
