The Agents of Mayhem Cause Mayhem In A Way The Saints Could Only Imagine
The Saints Row franchise has evolved from a mediocre GTA clone into a ridiculous, bombastic, and hilarious entity of its own. Now Volition are turning their attention to an offshoot story – the SHIELD story to the Saints’ Avengers if you will – the Agents of Mayhem. We spent some time with an Agents of Mayhem preview at E3 2016, and things look pretty promising for this new/not new franchise.
“Ahoy, mothafuckas,” yells Mr. T with an eyepatch character Hardtack. He’s a member of the Multinational AgencY for Hunting Evil Masterminds – MAYHEM. Led by Persephone Brimstone, Mayhem is tasked with defeating the evil Doctor Babylon and the rest of LEGION – the League of Evil Gentlemen Intent on Obliterating Nations. Yep, this game is in the Saints Row family alright. But a Saints Row game this is not.
Where Saints games eventually evolved into superhero simulators, Agents of Mayhem is more focused on things like team composition and shooting. In the final game you’ll build a team of 3 from a roster of 12 characters, 4 of which we had access to in the demo: Hardtack, Hollywood, Fortune, and Rama. Each has their strengths, so there will be lots of team building options in the final product. Rama is a bow sniper while Hardtack is a short range shotgunner – he quickly became my go-to agent while running around simply because his dialog is entertaining.
The opening cinematic had me smiling right away thanks to some great overacting and its comic book flair, and Volition’s pitch for the storyline seemed solid. In short, the Agents of Mayhem are all anti-heroes who operate outside the law and have somewhat questionable motivation. If Volition can manage to weave a meaningful story into the whacky shenanigans, it’ll be a pretty impressive accomplishment.
The open world of Seoul is yours to explore, though the demo we played was extremely linear and didn’t show off anything in the way of stuff to do. We raided the lair of an A.I. K-Pop star, and had a chance to play around with some of the mechanics. As I mentioned, shooting is a big component of the gameplay. It’s definitely still early, but the shooting felt reasonably satisfying, with a big difference felt between characters.
Swapping between characters is a simple button press, with the new character teleporting in immediately. That made for some interesting battle situations. For example, mowing through a nearby group with Hardtack, then switching to Rama to snipe off a few distant baddies before mopping up with Fortune. Each of the heroes has a special ability that operates on a cooldown, and which fills up their ultimate meter. The special powers ranged pretty widely but all seemed useful, and there was what appeared to be a pretty deep upgrade system though our time with that feature was limited.
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“The ultimates are grin-inducing”
The ultimates are grin-inducing. My personal favorite was Hollywood’s Action Movie mode, where every bullet sets off a massive explosion. Absolutely hilarious, and it turned several scenarios into 80’s action movies. What could be better? Well, there was also a Mario inspired invincibility star power…
The meta-game involves some of the stuff you’d expect from an open world game – building the sickest super agency headquarters ever. We didn’t get to try that part of the game out, but who doesn’t love upgrading an HQ?
Although it’s sticking to the script pretty closely, Agents of Mayhem appears to be managing to channel the wackiness of Saints Row into a new shell. It was a ton of fun to play, and had me thinking about well into my next appointment – a tough act at an event like E3. Will it hold up and translate into an awesome full-game experience? That remains to be seen. Agents of Mayhem is currently slated for the very specific release date of 2017.
