Agents of Mayhem Review

Volition knows how to make a good open world sandbox game, but it’s their knack for entertaining writing that really makes titles such as Saints Row: The Third stick out as one of my favourite games of all time. So when I heard they were taking the concept of a Saturday morning action hero cartoon and bringing it to life in video game form, I was pretty hyped from the start.

The end result is something that exists in the niche somewhere between Overwatch and The A-Team, with Agents of Mayhem being an organisation of heroic mercenaries dedicated to stopping the nefarious plans of the organisation LEGION. If that all sounds like it’s dripping with cliche, that’s because it is, but it’s also one of the reasons why it’s so entertaining. The game has a way of making the missions feel like a series of episodes, with super villains making recurring appearances, all building up to massive boss fights with grand set pieces. As well as providing some motivation for the plot and missions, the way the various cast of characters interact with each other, both the heroes and villains, add an enjoyable level of personality to what could be otherwise slightly tedious gameplay.

I have to admit that while playing the game, it felt a bit like a Saints Row sequel that got scrapped and remade into something else, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While it’s generally similar with things like driving mechanics, they tend to be a lot clunkier and feel less mechanically complex. It ends up being alright due to the missions not being as spread out around the map, and at least the driving isn’t completely redundant like it was in Saints Row IV, although I do kind of wish they had either made the game more fun to commute by foot, or spent a little more time on perfecting the driving.

In terms of general gameplay and combat, the game feels a lot like Crackdown, another open world sandbox game that I enjoyed a lot. However it’s the range of playable agents available and their diverse personalities and abilities that sets Agents of Mayhem apart. Before starting a mission, players put together a team of 3 agents that they can switch between at any time in the field. Each agent has their own weapons, special abilities, upgrades and ultimate abilities that give them unique play styles and fulfill different roles in combat, from agile and stealthy to tanky DPS and a few that exist in between. Being able to switch between agents in combat is not only essential to survive, but it also adds a lot of variety to the game play, which is needed considering that the missions and lairs can feel a little samey after a while.

While the game does have the action packed mayhem I came to expect from the trailers, it is unfortunately a bit too few and far between for me. There are those glorious moments where you’re jumping and dodging through the battlefield, avoiding projectiles and enemies while wasting Legion soldiers in a flurry of gunshots and explosions, but most of the time they’re quite short lived and broken up by too much chasing around the spread out forces or commuting between locations. It doesn’t help that a combination of forced aim acceleration and occasionally cramped battlefields make close quarters gunplay a flustering nightmare, but I imagine this isn’t as much of an issue on the PC version.

I did have my fun with Agents of Mayhem, and for me the writing is enough to carry the parts of the game that are lacking. If you liked the humour and writing in the later Saints Row games — which not everyone did, or you just really love corny super hero puns and liners, Agents of Mayhem is definitely something you’ll enjoy. It’s the kind of game that I’d like to see be successful, even if it’s only so that the game get a more refined sequel.

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