Agents of Mayhem review: A solid open world shooter that doesn’t break the mould

AGENTS of Mayhemis set in a world where a villainous organisation has staged a massive global attack and you and a team of heroes need to fight back.

SUPERHEROES and supervillains are, in many ways, inherently ridiculous.

Sure, it looks pretty epic when Superman punches a guy into another dimension, or The Joker enacts some complex villainous scheme with an ironic twist, or Dr Strange bends the very fabric of the universe, but we all know it’s not even a little bit realistic.

Fortunately, games (and popular culture generally) are starting to have some fun with the idea, and the latest open-world sandbox game from Volition is an excellent case in point.

Take part 1990s Saturday morning cartoon, part Saints Row and part Just Cause and you’ve essentially got Agents of Mayhem — which is ludicrously over the top and very aware of how extremely silly it is.

Published by Deep Silver on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Agents of Mayhem is set in a world where a villainous organisation known as Legion has staged a massive global attack on the planet, and megacorporation Ultor has formed its own team of heroes to fight back, known as Mayhem.

There are 12 agents to recruit, ranging from B-grade actor “Hollywood” (who has clearly drawn entirely too much inspiration from the 80s) to gang leader “Kingpin” and roller derby rockabilly Gatling gun girl “Daisy”.

If you like shooting and blowing things up, it’s not a bad time.

You deploy a team of three agents to the field and can swap between them more or less at will; each agent has their own special skills and abilities.

You deploy a team of three agents to the field and can swap between them more or less at will; each agent has their own special skills and abilities, including a “Mayhem” ability (think of an “ultimate” special power as in something like Overwatch) which unleashes devastating attacks on enemies and usually looks extremely cool too.

The entire game’s premise and set-up had a fantastic GI Joe/The Venture Bros-vibe and I loved that element of it. Even the loading screens sometimes have characters sharing inappropriate motivational messages; one of my favourites was a fairly straight-laced character saying going to school was important because her time at medical school taught her where to shoot people to cause the most damage.

However, it’s important to remember that no matter how much I wished to the contrary, this isn’t Saints Row V. It’s set in the same universe, shares some similar elements and even has some of the same characters (notably excessive force enthusiast Johnny Gat), but it’s definitely trying to be its own game.

While I loved the adventure cartoon vibe (including the cel-shaded inspired graphics), something about the way the whole game came together was just slightly off the mark. The dialogue is laugh-out-loud hilarious in many places, the game doesn’t take itself seriously, the characters swear a lot and are interesting, and all the mechanics from the Saints Row games that worked so well are here.

Yet somehow it doesn’t end up being greater than the sum of its parts — possibly because it’s unfortunately repetitive and doesn’t have the same breadth of activities as the Saints Row games.

Pretty much all the missions in Agents of Mayhem involve going to Objective A, killing a lot of bad guys, going to Objective B and doing the same thing, then finding Secret Lair C before fighting your way through it.

All the snappy dialogue, tongue in cheek elements, and ludicrous explosions are great aspects of the game, but eventually the “Didn’t I already do this?” feeling starts to push its way uncomfortably to the fore.

I also couldn’t shake the feeling there’s a lot of missing content, which the cynic in me expects at least some of to show up as additional DLC content down the track.

There’s references to agents who aren’t in the game, for example, and the global operations element against Legion seems terribly pared back; so given what Volition did with the outstanding Saints Row III and Saints Row IV, I’d be surprised if we didn’t get some mission/story expansions down the line somewhere too.

While I loved the adventure cartoon vibe (including the cel-shaded inspired graphics), something about the way the whole game came together was just slightly off the mark.

The location setting feels like a generic futuristic Asian city.

Agents of Mayhem is set in Seoul for no adequately explained reason, but the location just feels like a generic futuristic Asian city with robots and holograms and lots of sleek design plus some neon too.

You’re based on board some sort of cloaked floating HQ (because why not?), where you can fit out your squad, view your progress, and do the other video game base stuff one would expect.

Of the enemies you face, only two (not counting the ultimate villain) are really memorable — one is pop singer August Gaunt (who sings a hilarious autotuned song about how awesome he is and how much you suck as you’re fighting) and the other is an AI manifesting itself as a K-Pop group.

There was also a disappointing quantity of bugs in the game, ranging from amusing glitches through to ultimate powers deploying but having no effect.

In spite of all this, Agents of Mayhem is fun and doesn’t ask too much of you as a player beyond “Do you like to blow stuff up? Great, go and do that.”

It’s obvious the developers had far grander plans for the game and there’s not enough here to say “go and get this right now”, but it’s something to put on your watchlist and grab in a few months when it’s on sale and there’s (hopefully) some more content added.

In the meantime, go and play Saints Row III and Saints Row IV, which are both excellent, hilarious, and some of the most fun open-world games available.

Originally published as Agents of Mayhem review: A solid open world shooter that doesn’t break the mould