As a kid, a staple of my childhood was Saturday morning cartoons. Before the days of Cartoon Network and the like, it was the only time you’d find GI Joe, He-Man, and the other heavy hitters from the early 90’s. Agents of Mayhem tries to capitalize on the nostalgia these series offered by adding adult humor. Based on that, you’d think this would be an instant hit coming from Volition, whom brought us the Saint’s Row franchise.

Agents of Mayhem follows the members of Mayhem, a nod at GI Joe, which features a number of “heroes” from different backgrounds with varying abilities, and their battle against LEGION. They have their sights set on Korea and you will spend your time battling them in the futuristic setting of the country. As a child, I would have eaten this up and begged my parents for every toy, cereal, and marketing material offered. Sadly, the adult humor that is added falls flat and is not enough to draw me into the story, world, or any of the characters, which is major disappointment.

Most of the 12 playable characters are more akin to switching weapons than actual characters, as they all control almost exactly the same and feature a single weapon, ability (essentially throwing a grenade that features a different area effect), and special ability (which typically involves a super powered weapon or the ability to freeze the enemies for a short period of time). This does make the game accessible, but becomes stale very early. Luckily, most missions can be completed by any unlocked hero and allows you to select up to three to fit your play style.

Each character is introduced with either a high quality animated cut scene or a less thrilling motion comic, giving us their origin and motivations for joining the Mayhem team. While the animated segments are done well, the motion comics are often boring and make me question why they continued to switch between the two styles.

The villains are equally bland, and to give you an idea at how low they have sunk, they include a knock off of Justin Bieber. While I am not a fan of the kid’s music, or overall shenanigans, I feel like they could have spoofed a number of other more noteworthy figures or villains from other stories. The rest of LEGION’s forces that you will face are equally boring, with only a few variations with a small number of attacks.

While Agents of Mayhem is great for mindless fun, it wears off quickly. The entirety of the game lacks the variation that the Saint’s Row franchise was known for. You will receive a mission, drive to a specific location, hack or interact with a device, kill all of the enemies, and repeat. Similar to their most recent offering, Gat Out of Hell, there really isn’t much variation of content, which is sad compared to the number of different side missions the original quadrilogy offered. The side missions featured do not offer much more than the core gameplay, with the exception of some racing elements. While I normally dread driving in open world sandboxes, it is quite enjoyable and looks amazing in this game. You do get a true sense of speed when behind the wheel of the Mayhem vehicles. My one complaint with the driving is minor; when you call in your vehicle, it will speed around and drives toward you, prompting your character to jump in similar to Batman in Arkham Knight. The one difference is your vehicle comes to a dead stop, opposed to continuing at top speed.

For an open world game, the visuals are amazing and free from clipping that is prevalent in this genre. The cel shaded graphics are also top notch and fit the style of the game. Overall, the presentation is great, with a few minor glitches and only one requiring me to restart the game; however, I did have to reload a checkpoint on a few occasions due to an enemy falling through the level or glitching into a wall. This seemed to occur primarily when resuming after the Xbox’s instant on feature. The other major glitch happened when my car got stuck in a tree, which prevented me from calling in a new vehicle. Again, this was mildly annoying, but not game breaking by any means.

Unfortunately, Volition decided against the previous option of creating your own character and allowing cooperative play. While you do get to customize the characters, vehicles and weapons  provided using a number of unlockable skins, the lack of these features make the game feel like a prettier version of Crackdown, without all of the fun.

While it is good to see Volition is still able to offer an impressive open world and make good use of the current console generation’s power, Agents of Mayhem is ultimately an unimpressive game. While not horrible or devoid of fun, I would strongly advise against purchasing the game and saving it for a weekend rental.

6 out of 10

Pros

• Stunning Open World Graphics
• Fun Driving Mechanics

Cons

• Flat Humor
• Repetitive Gameplay
• Uninspired Characters

Agents of Mayhem was developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. It was released on PC, PS4, and X1 August 15th, 2017 for $59.99. The game was not provided to us for review, and we played it on Xbox One. If you’d like to see more of Agents of Mayhem, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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