Agents of Mayhem is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. The game was released in August 2017 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In order to stop LEGION and take back the world, the Agents of Mayhem will traverse a sprawling urban battlefield from the ground to the rooftops and team up as a super-agent collective to stop.

Agents of Mayhem takes place after, although you needn't have played Saints Row to appreciate it. On a fateful day known as Devil's Night, a terroristic organization known as L.E.G.I.O.N.

Sprang up and attacked the world's governments, crippling them. A former lieutenant of that villainous team, Persephone Brimstone, later defected and formed the M.A.Y.H.E.M.

Organization to battle L.E.G.I.O.N.The conflict between these two teams closely resembles that between G.I. Joe and Cobra, with each side employing numerous larger-than-life characters (mostly defined by a personality trait or nationality) and plenty of bantering whenever they clash.

That's the basic concept of Agents of Mayhem, to marry a G.I. Joe-style world with the gameplay of an open-world third-person shooter. Further driving the point home, most of the cinematics make use of hand-drawn animation. It's a cool way to bring the story to life, although the actual animation often leaves something to be desired; and later in the game, you'll encounter motion comic-style cinematics instead of real animation.During actual missions, the story mostly comes across through phone calls and other dialog. Curiously, conversations sometimes have long, awkward pauses during driving portions – seemingly as a result of rushing the game out the door. But what Agents of Mayhem lacks in polish, it mostly makes up for with fun gameplay.

Meet the agents. Agents of Mayhem differs from Saints Row in several ways. The tone is much more serious and cartoon-like, and the gameplay prioritizes shooting over superpowers. But the biggest innovation this one brings to the table is a switch to predefined characters instead of custom characters.

Each of these agents has their own distinctive character design (such as Yeti, a Mr. Freeze-like icy Russian soldier), personality, weapons, and abilities.Players start with access to three playable agents: Hollywood: an actor turned agent, Hardtack: a hulking one-eyed demolitions expert, and Fortune: a female agent with a robotic drone and (terribly fake) Latino accent.

Eventually, nine more characters can be unlocked by completing character-specific missions found throughout the world map. Every time you start a mission or leave your sprawling, upgradable home base, you'll select three agents to take into the field. Only one character is playable at a time, but you can swap between them at will via the D-Pad. Inactive squad members recharge their health over time, encouraging players to swap frequently.As you unlock more agents, it's important to build a balanced team. Agents come in three classes: DPS, tanks, and specials.

They also get traits like armor penetration or air-dashes that make them suitable for different combat situations. Characters also level up through use, unlocking new abilities and allowing you to allocate upgrade points to that agent's unique traits. Completing missions also gets you gadgets, three of which can be equipped per character.

These provide interesting buffs and tweaks, such as enhancing a character's special ability, improving reload speed, boosting health, and more. It's quite a satisfying upgrade system on the whole, as is swapping between characters on the fly. Twelve playable characters wouldn't mean much if the gameplay didn't pass muster, but Agents of Mayhem's combat is really solid. You move pretty quickly, and the generous aim assist makes hitting enemies a snap as long as you aim decently close and they're within range.Most characters can dash, although some have distinct abilities like a stealth mode instead.

Everyone gets two special abilities that show off their personality and background, such as Hollywood the actor summoning a hail of explosions while he puts on sunglasses and poses for the camera. Triple-jumping and air dashing make things even more dynamic. That triple jump comes in handy for navigation and exploration – this is an open-world game, after all.

Three jumps is pretty fair, but I do miss the exaggerated powers of Crackdown and Saints Row IV. Flight or some other way to gain altitude in a hurry (not to mention a good ground pound) would be even more fun. Instead, you'll mostly have to drive between locations and then take stairs or platforms to reach the highest heights.The futuristic version of Seoul, Korea in which the game takes place is a bit smaller than in some genre games, but still offers lots of things to do and plenty of verticality. Crystal shards spread throughout the world will offer upgrade points when collected, similar to Crackdown's orbs. You can emit a radar ping for nearby points of interactivity but not the actual shards, which is a shame. The actual missions you'll encounter aren't the most diverse out there, but they're still enjoyable. Your goals generally include destroying specific devices, hacking computers (via a simple and enjoyable minigame), or killing groups of enemies.

Relying on a background as a mechanical engineer, you will need to fight for survival and construct the machines needed for a chance to return home. However, there’s one survivor: you.

Sometimes you'll need to drive or do some platforming mid-mission as well.Missions don't all take place on the world map. Your agents will often need to raid L.E.G.I.O.N.

Lairs, exterminating their inhabitants and destroying enemy tech along the way. They're enjoyable to start with, but they all look and play pretty much the same. That repetitive lair design is a shame considering how much more colorful and interesting the actual city is. The Xbox One version of Agents of Mayhem features an ample, worth a total of 1,000 Gamerscore. Naturally, these reward you for capturing different kinds of structures on the map and destroying various enemy emplacements. You'll also need to collect outfits for every character (via completing certain missions), level all 12 characters up to 20, and collect all vehicles.The hardest Achievements will likely be for finding every shard on the map and for completing every operation (a type of mission) on the highest difficulty. Assuming someone makes a good shard guide, reaching the full Gamerscore shouldn't be too daunting.

Overall impression. Agents of Mayhem is an interesting project for developer Volition. Rather than make yet another Saints Row, they decided to spin off and experiment with a different tone and gameplay tweaks.

The result is a cartoony sci-fi shooter with a clever squad system and truly diverse array of characters.The more serious tone and occasional lack of polish might disappoint players hoping for a true successor to Saints Row. But considering this is essentially a different brand and hopefully the first game of many, it certainly stands on its own as a quality open-world game. Just don't be surprised if it gets a stronger sequel down the line.Agents of Mayhem costs $59.99 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam.

Agents of Mayhem is a game that was full of potential but one that wasn’t fully realized by Volition. Despite being a fun, super hero action title, the game got a few things wrong due to its repetetive mission structure and unbalanced level design. But from a graphical standpoint, Agents of Mayhem has managed to surprise us, at least in regards to what is happening in the immediate vicinity of the player.

Traditionally speaking, players do not associate Volition with high end graphics that set new benchmarks and Agents of Mayhem doesn’t change that. However, what stands out throughout the gameplay experience are the particle effects and the engine’s destruction simulation. And you can expect a ton of destruction in this game resulting into some breathtaking particle effects. Whether it’s the player shooting bullets or a vehicle being blown to bits, the on screen effects can be quite mesmerizing. And although the destruction effects aren’t up to the level of say, the Frostbite engine, the effects match up quite well with the semi-cel shaded art style the game employs.

Agents of Mayhem uses a rather unique style for telling its story. Instead of focusing on in-engine cutscenes, it emphasizes on comic style cutscenes. This kind of effect really works well with the theme of the game and fans of the game will really appreciate Volition for going the extra mile to get this done.

Unfortunately, other than what is in your immediate visibility, the rest of the world feels quite flat, specially when you are looking at it from the top of a building. Vehicles feel like cardboard boxes and NPCs are quite less. The world feels quite empty at times. And this to be honest is quite disappointing.

On the base PS4 and Xbox One front, we see a target resolution of 1080p and 30 frames per second, and both versions see very little impact to performance. However, it’ the PS4 build that sees the most benefits as far as console versions goes. Agents of Mayhem is a PS4 Pro enhanced title and Volition have implemented a couple of features that push it beyond the base PS4 version. There is a decent amount of boost to level of detail along with 16X Anisotropic Filtering compared to 4X on the base PS4. This results into much more detailed and sharper texture work.

The PS4 Pro’s extra power also allowed the developers to implement higher quality shadow effects along with better resolution for particle effects which makes them look even more better that the base versions. There is also an improvement in NPCs and vehicle density. However, the biggest improvement comes in the form of frame rate boost. The game runs at an unlocked frame rate up to 60fps. Now this is completely subjective and some players may not appreciate the unlocked frame rate, but we found the game to be much better in this mode. It would have been nice if Volition would have pushed for a complete locked 60fps experience but given the on screen action the game aims for, we doubt it would have achieved that without taking a big hit to the resolution.

At the end of the day, Agents of Mayhem is a decent looking game on consoles. It certainly doen’t set new graphical benchmarks and its flat world design doesn’t do any favors to gameplay, but its solid visual effects along with some fun filled gameplay will definitely attract new players.