What the hell IS this game?

I've been loosely following this game for the past few months and i can't figure out what this game is supposed to be. Is it an open world game like previous saints row games? Is it an action game with rpg elements like destiny? Most Importantly, is it tied to the Saints Row universe or does it just appear to be? Even the logos in this game are similar to the saints logo.

I've heard from a video posted by eurogamer that one of the possible endings of Gat out of Hell remade the universe in which the saints were now police. Is this game a continuation of that concept? Is volition just going full Kojima on people by presenting the game a certain way and teasing things without coming clean about the nature of the game? I have so many questions. Can anyone help?

They're taking the mechanics of Saints Row 4, putting it in a separate(?) universe, and doing some new stuff with it.

For all intents and purposes, Saints Row is essentially complete and instead of rebooting it with a gritty new take (there wasn't many places they could take the series otherwise) they are just making something new. It's a spiritual successor.

The one thing I don't like about the game is that you simply turn into the other characters instead of all of you running around together. It's what I liked about SR3 and 4 was running around the open world with teammates following me around wreaking havoc.

Judging by that symbol i wouldnt doubt its in the same universe, maybe in the future or something. I never beat 4 though so i dont know.

To me it seems like they started out making this game it's own thing and over time either a lack of confidence in it standing on its own or marketing has come in to make it much more Saints Row.

For me, I was tired of IV by the end of it so not looking for more Saints Row.

I'm pretty sure it's confirmed it's the same world to some degree or another? Isn't the big corporation from Saints 3 and 4 in there in some major capacity?

Anyway, it ain't my dream time-hopping dinosaurs vs. Nazis Saints Row V so it's not really on my radar.

yeah It's an alternate universe sequel to Gat out of Hell

'Johnny Gat had the ability to remake the world, and if he chose that option, the Saints didn’t happen. Instead he, Kinzie Kensington, and Matt Miller are cops who question Penelope Brimstone, the woman who leads the Agents.'

They need to get out front and explain this game a little better, because right now it seems like a cross between Crackdown and Saints Row with some Sunset Overdrive thrown in, and I love all three of those things but this does not seem appealing. It just looks...forced and shallow.

I think the problem is that what was great about the Saints Row games was never the combat but a combination of A) the Characters, B) the story (at least from 3 onward) and C) open world Hijinx in the city. Smashing stuff with a tank or driving a VTOL around and vaporizing fools or whatever.

This looks like it has some of A but I haven't seen or heard much about B or especially C and that makes me nervous. As far as I have seen this is being sold as a mission based game focused on completing objectives and such. No thanks. Those were never the parts of Saints Row I liked. Cruising around and singing along to What I Got with my homies, causing destruction in the city, doing dumb side missions like Insurance Scam, those were the good parts. Show me THOSE parts are in this game and I'll be interested.

I bought the game.. and everything about it tells me i don't like it. I'm real sad that there is no co-op. But the mission's I've seen don't look real great. What made saints row 3/4 was oddly the story/world. I really don't want to switching between people and they all seem so unlikeable. But hopefully i'm wrong and the story and world are fun. :) (i got my 2 hour steam return window!)

@zurv: To me all that kinda sounds like a reason to *not* pre-order a game, unless they had a hot -50% offer, which probably isn't likely.

At first I thought it had actually come out already and figured that it must've really bombed with no on talking about it on forums or Twitter.

It's got a brand of co-op for your friendslist, you play single player helping to achieve a goal. This unloock for me in about 7 or 8 hours, and I'm super excited!

https://fl1ppy.com/2017/08/07/connected-contracts-in-agents-of-mayhem/

Ultor has been the evil corporation in a lot of Volition games, dating back to OG Red Faction and the like. I think it's their Forrest Kaysen.

What about this game was confusing? Squad based open world 3rd person action game.

... and returned. :(

It is a darn shame. But it is 100% what is looked liked from the marketing. No only am i super bored, but i really like SR3/4. The game feels soulless. I didn't like the people nor do i really want to switch between people that i don't care about. Maybe i'll pick it up again when it is on heavy sale... but.. just maybe...

The game looks like you'd expect and strangely a little hard on my system.

(at some point TY will finish processing up to 4k)

hrmm.. what is there to play!?!?!? I guess some more chicken dinners. Coming up is the xcom 2 DLC and Divinity Original Sin 2.. destiny 2... I SO BORED!

It's no fuckin' Saint's Row but I'm still kinda havin' a good time.

Damn I'm having a lot of fun!

i'm jelly :(

I wish i liked it. I'm sooooo bored.

The key is to as quickly as possible get rid of the starter three characters because they're horribly fuckin' average.

I understand in theory why you start with the basic three stock standard classes but Volition has been so good at bombastic starts so trundling around with those three chuckleheads was rough.

The characters are the best thing about this game. The world and Quest design feels like this used to Be a mmo at some point of it's development.

Nah the world and quest design is basically identical to Saint's Row 4. They just don't organize it into neat lists quite as much.

Seems like the writing makes or breaks this game as the gameplay seems pretty decent, but from what i have seen the writing aint great. The johnny cage guy seemed real bad

Haven't played this game but I think SR 3 and 4 really skated by with lackluster gameplay because of other things they had going on, so if that isn't there I can see a super boring game.

@crommi: I can't tell if your comment "that's a shame because those are well crafted characters based on market research for the main demographics" is cynical snark or sincere. Bravo.

This game feels like it came out in 2011. It looks okay (it's cell shaded so it's not super detailed but the style is fine) and it feels alright to play, but the shooting, the driving, and the open world design seem super dated. It feels like someone loved Crackdown and I guess Overwatch and tried to combine those games, but without Overwatch's insane polish and style and without understanding what makes Crackdown fun (orbzzz!)

The open-world elements are bad. This game should have been a more carefully crafted linear shooter. The activities in the world are boring and cut and paste, and the only fun part is the "shard" gathering we've done a billion times before. The traversal is just a triple jump and an air dash or wall jump, though, so this is one of the worst versions of shard climbing I've played (compared to Crackdown, Infamous, Gravity Rush, and a bunch of other games with better traversal that makes orb/shard collection fun.)

The writing is also terrible and outdated. I have not enjoyed any of it, and I liked Saints Row the Third quite a bit (haven't gotten around to 4 yet, though this game is making me think I should have played that instead.)

I don't hate the game, since I love Crackdown and this has enough elements of that game to be fun, but maaaan. I don't know what they thought they were going for here, or why you would make this version of this game in 2017.

As I play I keep thinking about Sunset Overdrive, and all the things that game did well (amazing traversal, very well designed open world city, missions with a ton of variety.) I would even say that Sunset Overdrive's story and characters are better, since they may be a little try-hard but at least they were trying. Say what you will about a group of LARPers in a real apocalypse, but it's an interesting and memorable premise. This is a major step backwards in every way from Insomniac's underrated masterpiece.

I bought Agents of Mayhem because I wanted a mindless open-world shooter to jump around in and unwind with, and it's adequate for that. It's not a disaster of a game. But this thing is going to drop in price fast and I would suggest waiting. It's the kind of semi-generic third person shooter that we used to get a lot of but have kind of dried up, but they dried up for a reason.

@bigsocrates: Yea just watching the quicklook I definitely got that vibe of 2011-2012 era of open world games where mission design was 'go to arbitrary location on the map where we spawn in modular prefabbed objects for you to either destroy or hit a generic interact button while killing dudes'.

That sort of design just doesn't fly anymore. That's the exact type of game design that everyone fears when they hear that a game is open world.

The weirdest part for me is it obviously wants to get the Saints Row vibe but they stripped out the best parts of Saints Row (coop, character creation, (fun character interactions this may expand in beyond whats shown in the QL.)

It feels like it'll turn out like a power fantasy. The kind Volition are good at making. The writing's a bit thick. I mean, it almost fits for the larger-than-life types they're creating but it's all a bit much.

this game is really fun.

@ivdamke: You left out all the other amazing mission types. Like drive boring cars to 4 different locations, activate a thing, and fight off waves of bad guys who attack the thing.

I really hope the mission design improves later. Saints Row always had interesting missions.

I feel like I've been pretty hard on the game, and I should stress that it's not terrible. It's...adequate. It has a lot of systems and character customization in terms of powers, and the core gameplay isn't offensive. The idea of controlling 3 characters at once is cool, and having to switch between them to heal is a good idea that forces you not to stick with just a single character. I just don't know who it was designed for and why it's such a throwback in so many ways. It honestly feels like a generic video game you would see on in the background on a TV show.

The animation in the cut scenes is a nice touch, though, even if the scenes themselves are poorly written and disjointed.

If it had co op I'd be happy to pick it up just to play with my GF. What a strange choice to leave it out.

I might have bought this if it looked like a good 3rd person shooter with an endless grind, sort of a TPS Diablo. But watching the QL, the combat mechanics looked flat and fairly weak. It should never take ten headshots to kill a standard enemy.

It takes 10 headshots cause Dan had his Difficulty ramped up to like 10. Just like D3, with the higher difficulty, it takes longer to kill enemies.

I played thought the first 3 hours of the game last night

-Combat is fine, I like being able to switch characters on the fly over weapon switching.

-The upgrade tree is per character and they all seem really boring so far

-The game looks good, not great but definitely a step up from SR4

-The story seems really lack luster so far, I'm not that far in but so far absolute zero holy shit I can't believe what I'm seeing moments; you'd think with the outlandish premise of this game; trigger happy heroes vs evil super villains; they'd be able to make this game crazy but there is no hint that that will happen and I'm not holding my breath.

-The side missions have been really weak so far, show up at a place shoot 3 guys or 3 crates and done.

-They seem to be constantly taking you out of the world, I think it's because the missions are just so short but you play for 2-3 minutes then they are popping a bunch of reward screens/menus yayaya...

-No radio stations in the vehicles just elevator music and a wisecracking ai.

Not a bad game, just not a good one either so far.

I went to Bestbuy today for something else and I couldn't find any indication in the store that this game was even for sale, 50+ copies of Prey, not a sign of this week's hot new game...

Played some more of this and hit an annoying bug that forced me to restart a checkpoint twice (you have to defuse three bombs but even though I did the game only credited me for two. It worked the third time I played it, when I went after the bombs in a different order.) I think I'm starting to turn against this game. I did one of the "dungeons" and it was literally one of the most boring things I've done in gaming in a long time, and I recently beat both Knack and the Order: 1886. Just interminable sameness with no real rewards. All the missions feel both two long and super samey. I've been doing some agent unlocks instead of advancing the story (so that I have more powers to play with) so maybe the story missions have more variety...but the agent unlock missions shouldn't be this bad either. They're all two part missions that consist of "drive to 3-4 locations and kill everyone there, who are just the same normal enemies you always see." It's super mediocre.

The game is also very very easy at the default difficulty. I haven't come close to dying. I will probably crank the difficulty up a bit, but I don't really want to because it's not the kind of game that would be more fun if it was more challenging. It's just so repetitive...

I'm really curious about the development of this thing. The city is big and detailed, the agents are relatively well designed, the concept is sound...and the gameplay is incredibly bland and repetitive. The writing remains legitimately atrocious. At times it feels like it's supposed to be tongue in cheek so bad it's good but it just comes off as bad. It is rare to see a game where some aspects are so good and polished and others are so bad.

Also the music REALLY sucks. There's what appears to be a very small licensed soundtrack, and the in game music is totally forgettable and just kind of "there." Some good music could have elevated things but it's not there.

This game is going to drop in price really soon. This has zero of the creativity or charm of Saints Row.

@bigsocrates: I agree with some of this. But, knowing volition, and being an optimist, I'm think this game will become more fully fledged with released DLC. Read in an interview that the launch version, focuses on the Pride sect, which seems to say that there are more baddies coming, a la City of Heroes kind of thing, possibly. Plus with the world missions, I'm expecting more zones?

I think Dan put it right, the writers had to write quips and jokes for 12 characters, plus Johnny Gat, so base game is feeling thin. Hopefully, with some contents update it grows into something we can LOOOVE instead of just like a lot. Ya know?

Maybe cause I'm colorblind but I was with Vinny on this one, really like the look of the game. I had completely tuned this game out cause I thought it was a multiplayer game. I kinda want to play it after watching the QL but the really bad, bordering on offense, Asian voice was a turn off.

@taaltos: This game cost $60 so telling me there will be DLC that will fix things is not appealing.

Maybe it was originally meant to be FTP? Kinda feels like it (lots of very repetitive bland content) and it has microtransaction hooks in it...

Regardless, while better enemies could fix the shooting (which isn't inherently bad, just boring because of the repetitive encounters) the driving would still suck and it would still have bland levels and the like.

I will say that some of the characters are pretty fun to use. The Yeti guy is seems well designed. The gadjets also change how characters play.

The more I think about it the more this game feels like it was designed as free to play. Basically every system...

I am willing to bet that this was a FTP game retooled as a $60 title. Maybe it will go FTP down the road.

My bugs haven't been fatal. Yet. I had Braddock stuck in her mayhem phase which led to me only being able to deal melee damage. Surprisingly fine, as I felt invincible for the mission. That seems to be the most common thing on PS4: HUD prompts staying up and potentially arsing the scripting up in some way.

Enjoying it but the boredom's not too far off. The gadgets and feedback loop has kept it at arm's length.

I understand why they would want to make a spin-off or new IP, whatever they see this as, but I kinda just wish they made another Saints Row instead. This game is just weird, and not in a good way. Pretty bummed on it.

Played this for about 5 hours now and I can start to feel how repetitive it is. The last four missions I did ended up taking me through a Legion lair to complete each time which are essentially a collection of objectives selected from a pool of 3-4 generic ones. The shooting is okay but I had to reduce the smart aim angle because I think the auto-aim is way too generous by default. I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs; the worst I had was an enemy fail to register as shootable by the crosshair and a hero t-posing for a brief period. It's a very middling game and if I bought it at $60 I would be disappointed. I think the best course of action for this game is to see if it drops to $30 or wait for a re-release with all the DLC, provided the DLC is actually decent.

This game feels like someone with the foot in the door. They're not quite ready to leave because they just want to show you one more thing. The combat and switching between the squadmates is fun and most missions are short. Finished my review just now and gave it a 7. It's good but with so many caveats.

Hit ANOTHER bug. Fortunately this one wasn't progress stopping, but an enemy who was supposed to fall from the sky got stuck in a drone and I had to snipe her from the ground without any sniper agents to trigger the end of the mission. Took me like 10 minutes and really really sucked.

This game was not carefully tested.

I will say re: my earlier comments that the story missions are the best part and have more variety than the agent recruitment missions or other side stuff. I would sort of recommend just mainlining the story in this game, except that you need to recruit the other agents to find the playstyle you like best. But I wouldn't do that all up front like I did. Those missions tend to be bad, while the story missions are...well the whole game feels outdated but the story missions are like decent story missions from 2010, so if you liked last gen open world games (which I did) you'll enjoy them decently well (which I do.)

Just had my first crash to blue screen, though I had a bunch of other minor scripting bugs and such before that.

This game is buggy. I would say extremely buggy for a console game (I am on PS4.)