Agents of Mayhem, the latest from the team at Volition, is not a Saints Row game. It’s also not a perfect game, but it is fun, rewarding your hours of time spent clocking the same hordes of baddies over and over with a slapstick story and a solid enough combat system.
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Fans of the Saints Row titles that came before this somewhat spiritual successor will find plenty to love, though, in Mayhem’s cringe-worthy jokes and colorful cast of characters — the two things the game hinges its bets on the most, and absolutely succeeds at executing.
Wrecking crew
You play (at any given time) as one-to-three different titular Agents of Mayhem, a global mercenary-esque peacekeeping force set in a futuristic version of Seoul, South Korea. The Agents bear a striking resemblance to the characters of Saints Row, going so far as to sharing the bright purple motif and NOLA-inspired logo. Your main target? The villainous bureau LEGION.
But the personalities of the Agents go behind that of just superimposed stereotypes. A quick sample of the 14 playable characters offers up Fortune, a latino gunslinger with a badass backpack drone, Yeti, a Russian military man turned superpower and Oni, an ex-Yakuza executive with pistol-perfect aim.
While a handful of characters are unlocked through playing the main missions in the game, some require specific side missions to unlock. Most of these end up being somewhat soulless journeys through underground LEGION bases, hacking terminals and taking out turrets. And that’s not unique to the side quests — the game’s main mission structure hinges heavily on this format, adding a boss or waves of enemies here and there to spice things up.
The saving grace of this game is its characters, their abilities and backstories. One of the first backstories you’ll see is Rama’s, where you find out she’s been working for Mayhem because its leader, Persephone, promise to help her find the cure to a plague ravaging her village. Its an honest and emotional arc that sets the stage for a lot of what Agents of Mayhem is packed with despite its often prepubescent humor.
Main missions will allow you to select three Agents to go into battle with, and you can switch between them instantaneously, allowing you to chain combos, play to different classes and strengths and plan out your next move carefully. More than once I’d charge into a horde of enemies with a character like Hardtack or Yeti — more tanky characters — and then follow-up with a quick poison shot from Rama or slow down dash from Fortune.
Your time in battle will eventually build up your Mayhem meter, separate from your abilities that have a cooldown. When the meter is full, you’ll be able to unleash that character’s special ability, which could range from insta-kills from the shadows to a snowstorm that freezes the enemies in a given area. In this sense, the game pulls a lot from Overwatch and other hero shooters.
The world is yours
While you’ll spend most of the game in the open world Seoul, you’ll hop back to the Agency to select missions, side quests, edit your squad, craft and customize vehicles and weapons and take part in the multiplayer “Contracts” mode, where players can come together to complete daily challenges and work to defeat LEGION, the game’s villainous bureau, on a global scale.
The game’s open world feels feature-complete, or at least based on what we’ve come to expect from open world games. The vehicles aren’t incredibly different from each other, but if you don’t want to wait for your Agency vehicle to be called in, feel free to use a civilian’s car to get around.
Here’s where the game gets to feeling like a spiritual follow-up to Crackdown. Besides the obvious things like an Agency and drops from those at the Agency, the game’s cel-shaded style, triple jumps and overall control feel extremely similar to the popular franchise.
With all of that in mind, it makes sense for the game’s actual story to take a backseat to gameplay, but the team at Volition didn’t slouch in at least offering something palpable and worth a playthrough.
Story beats are bookended by fully-animated cutscenes, serving to add a level of character not brought across by the game’s normal gameplay. It’s also a nice palette cleanser from the similar sites you’ll see in the game’s main missions. This part felt fresh and it felt like the time spent on it in development was probably worth it.
The single player content easily segments Mayhem from the Battleborns or Overwatches those not in the know might compare it to.
The verdict
Agents of Mayhem is one of the most fun games to release this year, easily. With that in mind, it’s also the perfect game to release in August, a solid enough title to spend some time in before jumping into the onslaught of fall releases — but that’s at no discredit to this game.
For most of what Mayhem tries to do, it succeeds. The game is a great progression of the Saints Row formula, though it lacks a bit of the satire that series threaded so well. That aside, we’re excited to watch the cast of the game grow. And hey, maybe let’s get some couch co-op next time?
Rating: Three and a half out of five stars.
