As I played through Agents of Mayhem, I discovered this game is not what I expected, and it is not very good. Volition trashed their outstanding Saints Row formula and instead created a generic third person shooter. It seems they put very little effort into making a game that is actually fun to play. This was one of the worst games of 2017 and that is disappointing since I am such a fan of the stupid humor and quality gameplay mechanics of Saints Row.
Agents of Mayhem is an open world action game, set in a futuristic Seoul, South Korea. You play as different agents from M.A.Y.H.E.M., an organization set up to stop evil masterminds. The main plot has you trying to stop a supervillain, named Persephone Brimstrone, from harvesting Dark Matter to become “godlike”. He uses his own agency, known as L.E.G.I.O.N. to strategically put his plan into motion. And you guessed it: it's up to you to stop Brimstrone from succeeding.
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The plot isn't necessarily bad. It is a generic plot, but a journey that people enjoy is the bread and butter of any game, generic or not. This is where Agents of Mayhem really falls flat. The journey is not fun or exciting. There is some Saints Row style comedy included, but it does not make up for the lackluster gameplay. The gameplay centers around you traveling to different key points on a map and completing an objective. The objectives aren't fun. They vary from shooting a wave of enemies to hacking terminals to exploring an underground base and shooting more waves of enemies.
There are 57 missions in total, and they're all variations on the same themes. That is fine when you first start the game, but when you are midway through, driving yet another van to yet another location and stopping yet another wave of enemies it loses its appeal. A lot of people felt Destiny was repetitive when it first came out, but Agents of Mayhem takes the gold medal. Even exploring the open map is boring as there's not much to do. For a game with a premise based on an agency that can stop crimes (or commit them), they managed to outdo even the worst of Ubisoft's open world games.
You have a home base where you go to get upgrades, make difficulty changes, and various other activities such as sending idle agents on special op missions (timer quests). There's a lack of customization outside of color schemes for characters or crafting new abilities. Going back and forth to this location is also cumbersome due to load screens. Luckily, you're hardly ever forced back to this area as you can choose most missions through the menu in the main world.
The shooting is fun on a moderate difficulty but that also becomes very stale. They're no recoil on most guns and the challenge in fighting enemies just depends on how high you have the difficulty set. Changing the difficulty adjusts the sponginess of an enemy and what types of turrets will be displayed at certain locations. But outside of that, there's not much to this game.
Though you can choose between a dozen different agents, they all feel like slightly tweaked variations of each other. Each one has a different gun and different skills. Some agents will buff themselves or cause damage over time. One cool thing about the heroes however, is that you can switch them out on the fly with a press of a button to help in certain situations. Such as with healing up your wounded agents or to get through an area that is too difficult for other agents.
It's disappointing to see the types of enemies you encounter not have a more creative variety of weapons or special abilities. Everything about this product feels like a polished rock instead of a gem. I can not recommend this game at any price. Even renting this is a waste of time. It's a shame that it starts off with some potential and ends up being a dud. How they went from something as insane as Saints Row IV to this is confusing. But whatever the case, play something else and don't bother wasting your time on this disappointment.
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