Agents of Mayhem is a new action game by Deep Silver Volition, the team that brought you Saints Row, set as the spiritual successor of their greatest series. Combining aspects of Saints Row IV and Crackdown, you take control of several Agents from an Agency, with the aim of kicking out a villainous organization known as LEGION. Your army versus theirs, fighting against waves of highly armed and armoured troops with your 12 agents plus DLC Gat.
Story
The story setup in Mayhem, much like the gameplay, is very hastily thrown at you. We are given control of 3 Agents for the Agency of Mayhem, in the middle of an attack on LEGION. Blowing up their bases, defeating/killing their lieutenants and kicking them out of Seoul. That is the jist of the story, and about as much as you’ll get throughout your time with the game. You do get some hints about Mayhems past, like the villainous past of your leader and why the organisation was formed, but Mayhem isn’t really a story based game.
Legion is a group of villains who have taken over Seoul before your arrival, and your main task is, like I said before, to kill or kick them out. Full of evil scientists, burly men and popstars who aim to rule the world with power, influence and money.
Even with the 13 agents, you don’t get much story progression, merely 1 mission for their quick backstory, then 2 follow-ups to gain some more insight or complete a personal task with them. After completing their personal mission you will gain new weapons or upgrades, then never hear about their past or stories again.
Agents of Mayhem is a long Open-World game, with plenty of collectables, side-missions and reoccurring events. If you want to pass by all the side stuff the main story will last you around 20 hours. Through its 57 missions and 5 bosses, a lot of your time will be spent killing enemies or following them, to kill them later. If you want to spend the time recruiting the 9 additional agents, getting the Agency to level 20, getting all 16 upgrades, unlocking all vehicles and gadgets etc, you will easily get closer to a 100-hour mark.
Gameplay
Mayhem plays very similarly to Saints Row 3 and 4, combined with Crackdown. You move around with WASD, jump up to 3 times with space, sprint with Shift, CTRL for dash or invisibility, mouse for aiming, left click for shooting and right click for iron sights. Besides the normal controls, you can also press Z to use Gemlin Tech you have crafted, from shields to lasers, swapping out the equipped one with the TAB menu. F is for your melee attack, whereas Q is your Agents special attack, from throwing grenades, sending shockwaves or changing into a melee only mode. Each Agent also has their own Mayhem mode, with G, which can be used when you fill up your Mayhem bar, allowing you to do powerful attacks or become invulnerable for a few seconds.
You can also drive cars, though their handling is very dubious, with little effort put into their designs and controls. They seem to have been a copy and paste effort from past games. They are fast, though plenty of enemies are just as fast, making chases rather boring and played out. WASD for steering, Shift for turbo and space for handbrake. No special effects here really, just bash into enemies to destroy their cars.
Your main gameplay will be running and jumping around the city of Seoul, gunning down any Legion troops you come across or accepting missions from Mayhem. You have your generic races and defence missions, with some that send you into Legion bases underground or taking out their outposts atop skyscrapers. A lot of these side-missions are repeatable, some are optional while some are forced like the outposts. Legion will continue to fight against your efforts, taking back parts of the city while you are concerned with other affairs. This can get quite repetitive and tiresome, though more immersive for some players.
As you blow stuff up and follow orders you will gain experience for your 3 selected agents, yes you play with 3 at a time. Swapping between these agents is done with the mouse wheel, and you will need to do so when they get low on health. The 3 agents with you will level up, increasing their health and damage output. You can also equip new gadgets to them, increasing damage, lower cooldowns or changing their attacks. You will also gain skill points on levelling up, to spend into their own stats like damage, or team buffs like money drops.
One of the collectables in the game are Core Shards, collect 10 and you get a Core. These are also rewarded by missions. These cores can then be spent on your characters to give them special effects, like gaining buffs from melee attacks or increasing fire rate. These cores are also used in increasing the Agents level past 20.
Overall thoughts and feelings
A lot of your time playing will be spent without music. Unless you are driving a vehicle or fighting, there won’t be a soundtrack playing. You will just have to listen to ambient noises and distant gunshots. When the soundtrack does play you will be greeted with synthetic tunes, trance hits and energetic backing tracks to accompany your destructive mayhem. I can’t fault the soundtrack or the sound effects as they fit beautifully with the aesthetic. I just wish they played a bit more often and didn’t leave us in silence when nothing is happening.
Sprinkling in so many design choices and genres, from Saints Row, Crackdown and even some Team America style comedy, leads to Agents of Mayhem feeling too rushed and chaotic. Similarly to its gameplay, the story and other aspects of the game are too quick without much thought placed on them. You will be doing the same thing over and over, with legion bases being repeated for several missions. A lot of the choices made with this game seem to be made to force the player to play longer, redo tasks and increase the end game time.
There is also a lack of multiplayer, or Co-Op, in a game where you control 3 characters. The setup and the world feel like it should be done with a friend or 2, but it forces you into a single player experience. There is an attempt at Co-Op with the online contracts, but all you see of that is a scoreboard and checklist, where groups of people playing single player just get critical hits or kills together.
Overall, Agents of Mayhem gets a 6/10, it repeats itself too often with no real solid story behind itself. There is silence too often during gameplay, with a lot of faith put on players to have played their previous franchise. It copies too much from Saints Row and Crackdown, turning into a poorly designed rip-off at times. The reuse of maps and levels causes the missions to become stale and boring after 3 times running through the same area. Collectables are mostly grind fests, with a poor approach to online coop. If you’re a fan of Crackdown, it might be best you wait for the new one to come out. If you’re a fan of Saints Row, this is not a Saints Row game. At its price, and what it offers, Agents of Mayhem does not seem to be worth it.
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