Agents of Mayhem – Our E3 2016 Preview

Unfortunately, these Agents of Mayhem don’t provide as much mayhem as we were hoping for.

The good folks over at Volition have never been known for their subtlety. Whether it attaching a bank vault to a helicopter in the opening of Saints Row the Third or dispatching people via wood-chipper as Frank Castle in The Punisher, the studio has always delivered on an excessive outrageousness that few other games dare to indulge in.

As the title suggests, Agents of Mayhem follows this cadence, as a game set in a neo-futuristic South Korea, wherein a group of badass mercenaries must prevent a terrorist organization from taking over the world. Unfortunately, despite its ties to the universe of Saints Row, Agents of Mayhem is a surprisingly dated affair that lacks the carelessly chaotic freedom that the studio is typically famed for delivering in bucket loads.

The “Agents” of the title are specifically 12 different characters (though each mission forces you to pick just three to work with) who all exhibit unique weapons, abilities, and personalities. For our E3 2016 demo, we were able to play as Hardtack, a close-quarters bruiser, Fortune, a pistol-whipping pirate, Hollywood, a mid-range combatant, and Rama, a bow-wielding sniper class.

Though we’ve yet to see who the other eight agents are, the gameplay diversity of these characters feels disappointingly narrow. This may be because the combat is pretty by-the-numbers; you fire your weapons, throw explosives and employ a limited number of character specific abilities.

To further dilute the fun, it might surprise you to know that Agents of Mayhem features no co-operative play whatsoever. Instead, you can instantaneously switch between the characters on the fly. This seems like an odd design decision, especially considering the potential for team-play between all the different characters. The idea is that you can quickly change between characters to react accordingly to each situation, but it just ends up feeling like a wasted potential in favour of an experience similar to playing a LEGO game on free-play.

What’s more, in our demo the characters were never able to interact with one another because there was only ever one on screen. It ruined the immersion factor, especially when you play as one character for a while only to then instantly switch to another without any plausible context as to why the agents wouldn’t fight together regardless. That said, each character has been given specific dialogue to respond to the story beats of the campaign, and will even react to certain environments and enemies in their own personal way.

On top of that, the most powerful special attack that each of the agents can employ is distinctive and entertaining to use. Hollywood, for example, works as an aspiring actor in between saving the world, meaning he can unleash a plethora of pyrotechnical explosions in the vein of a Michael Bay movie, obliterating any enemy unlucky enough to be caught in the nearby vicinity.

Again, however, there is also a lack of ambition evident in the mission design, or at least in the particular level we played. The structure would be familiar to anyone who’s played an action adventure title before; go to objective A, take out bad guys, go to objective B, take out more of the same bad guys, go to objective C, and kill the final boss.

The infamous tongue-in-cheek Volition attitude was certainly present throughout the level, however, which added a little more entertainment value to the proceedings. The charismatic final boss (a robot South Korean pop singer and her brainwashed lover), for example, reminded me of the kind of thing you would find in a Gearbox game. This particular brand of humor is likely only going to appeal to certain tastes, but anyone who’s played a Saints Row game will know what to expect.

Agents of Mayhem takes place in the open world of Seoul, South Korea and, we have to admit, we were surprised by how pretty it looks, considering the underwhelming visuals of the Saints Row titles. The comic-book art style appears distinct and boasts an aesthetically pleasing sheen, while the unique location of Seoul looks like it could be an interesting world to explore.

Unfortunately, we tried to find a speedy way to traverse the environment, only to discover that there were no vehicles or interesting travel mechanics, rendering the journey from checkpoint to checkpoint as a boring necessity rather than an opportunity to have more fun. After having to option to ride so many crazy and awesome vehicles in Saints Row, it’s a shame that we ended up just having to simply run around Seoul in Agents of Mayhem, even if we did encounter a few enemies along the way.

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Striking visuals aside, our time spent with Agents of Mayhem strangely felt like we had just played a PlayStation 2 game. This could end up being a good thing if Volition can translate their infamous penchant for the overdramatic into a more engaging experience. Ultimately, it was the odd design limitations and stale approach to gameplay that left the largest impressions on us. There is still plenty we don’t know about Agents of Mayhem before its release next year, but part of us wishes the game was just a little bit crazier.