Agents of Mayhem review: More routine than chaos
By Martin Benn
Agents of Mayhem is very good at what it does as a Saturday morning cartoon inspired action game, with fun characters and play style to match.
Developer: Volition
Publisher: Deep Silver
Platforms: PS4 (version reviewed), Xbox One, PC
Release Date: August 15, 2017
There is a time and a place for surface-level amusement, and Agents of Mayhem aims to be there to provide that entertainment whenever you need it. Featuring an array of interesting characters, fun abilities, and a pleasing cartoon style, Agents of Mayhem weaves in and out of animated cutscenes and enemy-spawning action.
The name of game here is collecting agents, collecting items, leveling up and maxing out. Complete the missions to obtain items, which will lead to better gear, which will help you take on the next mission, which will help you get better gear and level up your characters to unlock more gear and max out more objectives. I wish I could say there was a robust amount of variety here, but you will spend a lot of time running to and from destinations shooting large groups of enemies of varying strength until you level everything all the way up to 100%. 100% of what? I mean, there are a ton of different stats to keep track of. Pick one, get it to 100%, then start the next one.
“Keep it simple” may as well be the theme of Agents of Mayhem. It is both a crutch and the saving grace for such a game that at times can almost get in its own way. The humor is pretty well-placed, though it can, at times, make you cringe. If the game took itself more seriously, this could really harm it overall. The fun, relaxed tone, however, can help you to overlook some of the weirder aspects of the game.
As an example, there is a black male agent in the game named Kingpin, or as my nephew and I called him OJ Da Juiceman. Are you familiar with OJ Da Juiceman? If not, here is an example (NSFW). Truthfully, the only thing Kingpin is missing is the gold teeth and Atlanta flavor. He even throws in the ad-libs like “Aye” while he’s running around the city tearing stuff up. In a ridiculous world, the Kingpin is maybe the most stereotypical character they show and he fits right in with his boom box that he throws down, which forces enemies to stop attacking and start dancing.
…It feels almost a bit of a waste more characters did not have as deep or as meaningful of a story arc.
In a game where your costumes closely resemble the X-Men and other comic book characters, it all just comes up as pretty funny as a reference to pop culture stereotypes we are all aware of. The weird part is where these stereotypes are completely avoided, such as the case of the Indian woman who is an immunologist turned vengeful archer searching for the cure to a plague ravaging her homeland of Mumbai. The most stereotypical thing you can say about the character is her accent and headdress, but her story is far from the shallow story of some of the other agents.
In a game where you can turn your character into Iron Man and turn on your action theme music, it feels almost a bit of a waste more characters did not have as deep or as meaningful of a story arc. It could also be the opposite. Maybe what we really needed was an Indian man character who mesmerized people with his artful bhangra. I am not sure where I fall on this idea of stereotyping. It would seem as long as everyone is in on the joke in this game it is fine. At the same time, these jokes are kind of tired in many ways. More characters with greater substance may have attracted me to it in a greater capacity than seeing yet another stereotypical old man, a self-centered Hollywood star, the manic pixie dream girl, a soldier with demons, etc.
Agents of Mayhem is a lot of fun. I had a good time playing with the different agents and exploring their abilities and the many different load-outs and abilities you could put together. It is purposeful in its mindlessness; there is nothing wrong with that. After the tenth hour of repeating the same loop you did in Hour 1, though? You start to become a bit mindful of it. It is then you wish the story was a bit more robust and asked a bit more of you than clearing out enemies in various spots around the city. Unfortunately, there was never much more than that asked of the player.
Despite an online contract system that could have been ripe for partying up with friends in some capacity, Agents of Mayhem resolves to make this system at its most robust with different agent objectives. There is no easy in-game tracking of these objectives, nor do you really get updates on others’ progress until you personally contribute to it. There could have been a lot more thrown into this mode without turning it into an all-out shared online experience with other players in the same world. It is bizarre the final outcome of this game was seemingly never built with at least three person teams in mind. It is understandable if that’s the case, but then why include shared contracts with multiplayer in the game, and then build a world so barren it would mostly take hours of the same, repetitive encounters to fulfill them?
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In spite of everything above, I can certainly recommend most of Agents of Mayhem. The art style is very flavorful across all of Seoul and I adore the character design, especially the pop culture skins you can get from the comic book and cartoon character references. There was a lot of love poured into this aesthetic and into the feel of the game in terms of how your characters traverse the environment and bound around South Korea.
It is very true to the essence of its source material. In fact, I would love to watch an Agents of Mayhem cartoon featuring each character like a villainous Justice League tracking down their own missions as they come together to fight Dr. Babylon in the end. I’m just not sure everyone wants to become initiated into this video game version of it.
Volition. . Agents of Mayhem. 6. Agents of Mayhem executed a rather brilliant idea in many half-baked ways. Half of the heroes are fun to play with. The character story missions are engaging, while the main missions are rather rote and bland. The combat can be thrilling if it weren’t the only way you engaged with these players. In all, the execution fails a great premise for what could have been a fun romp around a city. I wanted to like this game more, but it ultimately never brought much more to the table beyond the slapstick vibe it had from its opening moments.
This review has taken every aspect of the ongoing development of this game into consideration as of press time. After playing with fully active online servers, a final review will be posted with a score. A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.