Started: 8/16/2017

Finished: 7/29/18

Platinum: No

DLC: Yes

So, I will start out by saying when this game was first announced I was excited for it. I was a big fan of the Saint’s Row games (got into it from part 2) and seeing this new idea from that team got me pumped. I know many SR fans were upset this wasn’t a new Saints Row, and when they released Gat out of Hell (I think we can all agree Gat out of Hell was just some glorified DLC that was released as its own game) people were a bit disappointed. I dug the trailers of the 80’s GI Joe cartoon idea and with the hints of being somewhat remotely tied to the Saints Row universe I was very willing to give it a chance.

I have to say, being attached to Saint’s Row didn’t help this game.

I didn’t follow the live streams or any of what the company released because I didn’t really want to be spoiled on anything they my have in store for the game. Some of the trailers that was being released at the time showed the whole team building thing and the whole idea of special powers and what now got me interested. I ignored the cries of comments on youtube and what not because by this point no matter what a company says or does people will cry bitch and moan about it not being what the fans want. Seeing that most of those complaints were from SR fans made me roll my eyes, say under my breath that they will cry no matter what and went on with my wait.

After the delays, I wondered what was going on.

The marketing seemed to lean real hard on the “This is kinda like Saints Row! Really! Honest!” and I think that was adding more salt to the wounds that would be opened when the game was released. And with Johnny Gat as preorder DLC that really got people on the “I hope this fails” train.

Being released as a buggy mess did not help anything!

When I first got it I played it for a little while. The day 1 patch came out but there were still issues with things like graphic hick ups, missions not triggering, and other problems that would make people lose interest in playing. I think that’s why I stopped the first time. I got pretty far in getting some characters up to level 20 and tried to do the side stuff but it was like fighting me whenever I tried to get some enjoyment. I would be in a side mission, almost done when bam, freeze up. Or be in a story mission and boom, an enemy suddenly becomes invincible to any and all damage, causing the mission to not go into the next phase. I got tired of this and stopped playing.

When the wheel picked this for my next game I grumbled. I had a feeling this could be a Valkyria Revolution repeat of me hateing every moment and just wanted to skip everything and get to the end.

But after getting a patch and playing, I have to say I don’t hate Agents of Mayhem. I don’t love it or put it up on the upper level of god like games… but it’s playable. The problems I have with it now can’t be fixed with patches.

First off the side missions and story missions are total repeats. The main side mission that can net you more money, xp and bonus stuff are LEGION hideouts. These places maps are randomly generated but really the rooms are “Kill all enemies” “Destroy items” or “Hack computers” but the main one you will be doing over and over again will be the kill all enemies. This gets old fast. If this was just for the side mission stuff I would just say “F it, going to do something else…” but these rooms and mission also hit during the story missions.

Now you can make a three-person team you can swap out at random during a mission that can help. But I found myself mainly using the roller girl with a mini gun, Daisy, more than anyone else in the game. The characters are neat and each have their own kind of goofy backstory and code name that would make 80’s toy companies proud. But really, I found a lot of them just too slow at causing damage or just not helpful at all. The whole idea is making a team for the mission at hand or to fit your play style but really you need a shield buster, a skin piercer, and a hacker. No one in the game is all three of these because each character is only two skills but again the main ones I listed are the only skills you need for all the missions.

A system the game has that was neat but got annoying to me was a difficulty level that slid up to higher and higher levels the more you played. This is good and all and you can always move the level down on your main hub area “The ARK” but there were a couple times I didn’t realize the game decided to crank up the level to 15 and when I was killed by normal troopers who I was able to kill with ease the last mission I found out I really had to keep my eye on that. I mostly kept my level to about maybe 10 or 12 but yeah when you are trying to make it to a check point then suddenly your blown up by a group of giant bots it will get on your nerves. I wish there was maybe something in the options that can lock the game to a level so you don’t have to worry about the very sudden jump.

The boss characters were interesting but just like the bases or the missions that came before them their fights were also repetitive. They would go through stages, first being shielded by a machine so you have to not only kill the machines but the waves of troops. Then you can fight them but oops the shields came back or more troops. It became a drag for me because really, I wished there was something more to the fights but again it was lather, rinse and repeat till dead.

Now I said I got the last patch that was released for the game. It did fix the issues I had before… but there were some hiccups that almost caused me to give up on this game again!

A couple times a mission would bug out, making a checkpoint or something I was suppose to do not come up and one time an enemy was unkillable. Thankfully I was able to restart a past check point and had no problems but when I was getting close to the end of the game the game hard froze on me twice right in the middle of two story missions. At several points during this moments on my ARK squad screen would also start messing up. The screen would zoom in or the menus for picking character skins and weapons would not show up. It got to the point I was getting close to saying maybe my disc or something was breaking that could cause me to not finish but after giving the system some time to cool off (even though I wasn’t playing it that long or my system wasn’t that hot) The game decided to let me finish it.

The game ends with something of a cliffhanger/sequel bait but seeing how this game didn’t sell well, review well and the company laid off a good chunk of the staff I don’t see a “season 2” happening for Agents. And I have to say, that would be sad to tell the truth!

I think a sequel could fix some of the game play issues the first had and that maybe they could lean more away from trying to lump this with Saints Row. Who knows maybe there could be a part 2 but only time will tell!

There is a interesting youtube video I watched recently about Agents of Mayhem and what went wrong with it I will link right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp3St3sOaVk give it a watch to see what could have been!

NEXT GAME: Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4) (Oh is my wife gonna kill me for this!!!)