Agents of mediocrity

Volition (Saints Row, Agents of Mayhem) has laid off over 30 people, including general manager Dan Cermak, Kotaku reports. That's about 15% of its roughly 200-person staff and comes on the heels of Agents of Mayhem's August release. 

Agents of Mayhem is set in the Saints Row world, but a separate story seemingly meant to give the latter series a break. The last Saints Row release -- and first under new publisher Deep Silver -- the standalone Gat out of Hell mostly saw just-above-middling reviews. So too did the full game, Agents of Mayhem.

Though studios often do huge layoffs after AAA releases, Deep Silver is reportedly unhappy with the game's sales; in the UK charts, it was beat out by ancient games Grand Theft Auto V and Fallout 4 upon release.

Big Layoffs Hit Agents of ??Mayhem Developer Volition [Kotaku]

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Open-world action fest

It's been a long summer dry spell of new releases, but Volition's Agents of Mayhem has broken the ice with its release today. PC gamers can pick up deals as high as 26% off from various digital retailers. Console gamers? Your best b??et is either Amazon Prime's 20% off, or Best Buy's similar Gamers Club Unlocked discount.

For the Steam copy of Agents of Mayhem, one of the best deals is at digital retailer GMG for $44.27, which is offering a 10% off discount code for titles releasing in August - which of course includes today's title published by Deep Silver. The open-world action shooter has climbed to the #3 top-seller spot on Steam with mostly positive reviews. You can also find the game available at GamesPlanet for about $43.73 after currency conversion.

August Releases

Use Coupon: AUGUST10

• 08/15: Agents of Mayhem (Steam) — $44.27  (list price $60)
• 08/16: War Tech Fighters (Steam) — $9.75  (list price $15)
• 08/22: The Escapists 2 (Steam) — $15.29  (list price $20)
• 08/29: Warriors All-Stars (Steam) — $38.24  (list price $50)
• 08/29: Dead Alliance (Steam) — $30.59  (list price $40)
• 08/31: Life Is Strange: Before The Storm (Steam) — $15.29  (list price $20)
• 08/31: Life Is Strange: Before The Storm Deluxe Edition (Steam) — $19.12  (list price $25)

Other noteworthy August titles include Life is Strange: Before the Storm along with The Escapists 2 - both of which are highly anti???cipated for their respective fanbase.

For those wondering, we tried the code on the August 29 release of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen and unfortunately it's a no-go. Having said that, GMG does offer the expansion for 25% off at $30 which is close to its lowest price since pre-orders become available earli??er this year.

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Loading is half the battle

Volition took Saints Row ??in such a nuttier direction than anyone could have predicted. But after ruling Stilwater, taking out the military in Steelport, being trapped in a virtual world and fighting aliens, and literally going to Hell, surely they had reached a creative impasse with the series. 

In a surprising, Volition fashion, they decided to just take some of the Saints Row DNA and apply it to a different kind of parody. Instead of aping open-world crime fantasies like Grand Theft Auto, instead we have a mishmash of Overwatch, Crackdown, and '80s cartoons like G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K. 

And just like those cartoons of old, Agents of Mayhem is a kooky ?f??un time full of incredibly noticeable faults. 

Agents of Mayhem (PS4 [reviewed], Xbox One, PC)
Developer: Volition
Publisher: Deep Silver
Released: August 15, 2017
MSRP: $59.99

Branching off of one of Gat Out of Hell's endings in which Gat asks God to recreate the Saints Row universe, the evil corporation L.E.G.I.O.N. launches a surprise attack on the world (known as Devil's Night) and takes over. After a change of heart, former Legion lieutenant Persephone Brimstone forms M.A.Y.H.E.M., a group comprised of code-named agents who all have their own motivations and colorful personalities. Those colorful personalities inform Agents of Mayhem's core conceit of taking on missions with teams of three character??s. Each agent has their own area of proficiency, with some being better at hacking and some who are able to break through enemy shielding faster, so it's a matter of managing the mayhem ?and figuring out which team composition works for your style of play. 

I was surprised at how much variety was at work here. While controlling the agents feels similar to the Saints Row series, as aiming and shooting tends to feel as stiff as it did in those games, ea?ch agent is refreshing. Their core movement may share similarities among each other since the differing agents all come equipped with superpowered triple jumps and dashes, but there's been a great amount of attention to detail when it comes to incorporating their personality ??into the weapons they use, their special ability, and finally, the "Mayhem Ability." 

My favorite agent Daisy, for example, is a rough and tough roller derby queen who uses a minigun. Couple that with her special ability (which is on a cooldown meter and activated using the right trigger) that cools her gun but gives her a shield which can knock back en??emies when dashing into them. Toss in the ability to switch between agents by pressing left or right on the control pad, and there's quite a few ways to take down enemies. One of my pressing strategies was to use the snow-Russian Yeti's special ability to immobilize enemies, switch to Daisy and unload on them, and finally switch to the arrow sniper Rama and run away and pick at them from afar. But that's only one of the many possible strategies to mess around with. 

Agents of Mayhem is a parody of Saturday morning cartoon nostalgia, so it allows Volition to give their demented take on the genre to a hilarious degree. Returning to the home base between missions yields a load screen with an agent saying something banal as a G.I. Joe-esque PSA, the 2D animated cutscenes scattered throughout elevate the inherently goofy narrative, unlocking agents requires playing through their character-specific missions which start with an animated opening and title card, and the setting of futuristic Seoul, South Korea lends the open world to a clean look with a lovely pastel and neon palette. Unfortunately, Mayhem's personality ??can't quite ?mask the flaws beneath. 

The open world itself is a bit hollow. Driving around may feel much tighter than in Volition's past works, but the mission variety leaves much to be desired. The story and character-specific ones may be fun, but there are plenty of side-missions or even ones necessary to progress that feel like filler. Lots of them, especially the Legion lair quests, involve surviving through waves of enemies. Even some boss fights include fighting waves of enemies and it hammers in a monotony that the core mechanic of switching agents tries so hard to avoid. Even if Mayhem gave me the tools to deal with these waves in different wa??ys, it didn't change the fact that I was eventually clearing out yet another wave in another room that looks exac??tly the same as the one before. 

This is not even factoring in some actual technical issues I came across. Agents of Mayhem isn't the best looking, even with its lovely coloring. There was a bit of pop-in with some areas of Seoul, the home base has a weird hazy filter in some especially well-lit areas, and it seemed to have trouble loading as sounds from the game would either bleed into story cutscenes or loading screens. Hopefully this won't be a common occurrence, but Mayhem did crash on?? me at the end of a particularly lengthy boss fight toward the end of the game. Compounding on this already annoying happenstance, this boss fight is?? multi-tiered (with two phases of enemy waves and one of fighting the actual boss) and is at the end of a three-phased mission which had me clear out two areas of enemies before even getting to the final fight.

But despite these technical flaws, I still had a really fun time messing around with the agents. Enjoying Agents of Mayhem is sort of ??like watching a cartoon you used to love without the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia or the naivete of youth. You'll get more of a kick laughing at it, rather than with, but there's a smile on your face either way. 

_{[This review is based on a retail build? of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Agents of Mayhem appeared first on Destructoid.

That's not music! That's just noise!

Volition's Saint's Row-spinoff Agents of Mayhem is one month away. The latest in a series of trailers for the open-world ac??tion-adventure game introduces us to three new agents, collectively known as "The Firing Squad."

Scheherazade is a stealthy, arabian-themed assassin, who uses light-speed travel to get the drop on her prey. Oni is a stylish former yakuza, whose fast sharpshooting skills are second to none, and former Saint's Row punching-bag Pierce?? Washington returns as his wannabe-superstar alter-ego, Kingpin.

The Firing Squad join the Agents of Mayhem's team roster, alongside T??he Bombshells, The Franchise and the Carnage A Trois, in their explosive war to bring down villainous organisation L.E.G.I.O.N.

Frankly, trailers in this style do nothing for me, either I'm old and out-of-touch, or marketing ??agencies are. I'm willing to accept that it's likely the former.

Either way, be prepared to take your selected agents int?o battle when the game drops August 15 on PS4, Xbox One? and PC.

The post Face The Firing Squad in Agents of Mayhem trailer appeared first on Destructoid.

No toybox feel just yet

I've been hooked to Volition's Saints Row series ever since it underwent a major tonal reboot with Saints Row: The Third. The series may have been a victim of diminishing returns as of late -- you can only jump over the proverbial shark so many times -- so I was hoping the spin-off, Agents of Mayhem, would be the boost this formula needed. 

Reading Steven's preview a few months ago, I was excited to play the game myself during E3. After spending an hour with it, my excitement has tempered a bit. Despite the admirable reach of its gameplay, Agents of Mayhem feels like an insular experience. 

Taking place in the -- now official -- Saints Row multiverse as a byproduct of one of Gat Out of Hell's multiple endings, Agents of Mayhem is a story of "Bad vs. Evil." MAYHEM has taken the law into their own hands as an evil group, The Ministry of ??Pride's LEG??ION, continues to dominate the world.

The E3 demo featured 14 playable characters, each coming with their own animated introduction. I was introduced to the characters Oni, a yakuza who gave up his ways and joined MAYHEM when he realized LEGION had infiltrated, and Redcard, a soccer hooligan who was recruited for his ability to rally those around him. I was definitely taken aback with the seriousness of Oni's introduction, and it gave me a glimmer of hope that the new direction meant a scaling back of Saints Row's intense craziness to a more manageable level, but Redcard's intro is full of the jockular humor the series tends to dabble in. The beauty of these wild variants, however, is Agents of Mayhem can presumably cater to your preferences. 

In order to take on any missions, you'll have to select a team of three members with an ability to switch between them on the fly (so no co-op multiplayer to be found here as it's not needed). I chose to go with Redcard (a run and gunner with an automatic shotgun), Rama (a stealthy archer), and Joule (an engineer with a turret buddy) in order to give myself three different play styles to fumble around with. After running around the world for a bit, and failing to blow up any vehicles despite numerous attempts, I headed into the available story mission: tracking down a pop star with a thinly veiled resemblance to a current notorious artist, Gaunt. He's a boss with bad singing whose technological advances have hypnotized people into loving his music. I get the feeling his animated intro was supposed to be funny, but if you're not a fan of Volition's low-hanging-fruit humor then Agents isn't exactly going to change that. It's as flat ??and dated as its pop culture references. 

Before heading into the mission fully, I was walked through Mayhem's customization options. Since there isn't a character creator, the hope seems to be that the variety of team combinations, skins, and weapon properties will ease that pain. Although there are still the crazier weapons Volition has made itself known for (in the form of "Gremlin" weapons), the individual buffs and changes I made to my team didn't seem to carry any impact. Smaller incremental changes (percentages ranging from 5-10%) to things like cooldown time or damage just don't seem as worth it as upgrades to weapons in the Saints Row series. I'm hoping this'll become a much clearer element with a longer playtime?, but at least there's an option to shift them around during missions. 

As for the gameplay, despite each character's lovely personality, the three wildly different characters all moved in the same way. I do appreciate how every character has a line of dialogue for every situation (even if you change characters mid-sentence), but all the personality in the world couldn't save it from feeling all too familiar. I shot some robots, I arrowed some robots, and then I lasered some robots. I still ended up playing the exact same way I did in Saints Row (basically running and shooting without giving?? a damn), but without any of the insanity to accompany me just yet. Even using my first Gremlin weapon to trap a club full of hypnotized teens in giant plasma balls felt slightly hollow.&nb?sp;

Volition is aiming to take Agents of Mayhem somewhere it has never gone before with the Saints Row universe, and?? I believe t?he studio can do it. Although the demo I played through felt eerily familiar, I'm hoping it was just a preamble meant to ease me into a new chaotic world. There's quite a bit of potential in its weapon and team customization should they reveal hidden layers. 

It may not be living up to the Mayhem in its title rig?ht now, but with the sheer amount o??f toys to play with, there's bound to be fun here. 

The post Agents of Ma??yhem ??feels like a boiled down Saints Row appeared first on Destructoid.

BLAT BLAT WITH MY GAT!

Daniel Dae Kim may be famous for his roles on Lost and Hawaii Five-O, but to me, he will always be Johnny Gat. His performance as the mad dog leader of the Saints in the Saints Row ser??ies has become so ubiquitous that I almost can't separate the two. Imagine if Kim actually was that psychopathic or narcissistic in real life.

In a fitting bit of tribute, Deep Silver has announced that Gat will be available in Agents of Mayhem if you p??re-order the game from GameStop (or Steam for PC). Ugh, pre-order culture and all, but at least Gat looks great.

Along with Gat comes Lazarus, a robotic humanoid that represents the next step in huma?n evolution...or something. I don't know, her backstory is just as crazy as this game looks. She is available to all digital pre-orders of the game (whereas Gat is for physical copies).

There isn't a trailer ava??ilable for her, but she seems okay. I me??an, she's not Johnny Gat, but then no one is.

The post Johnny Gat is back in Agents of Mayhem as pre-orde??r DLC appeared first on Destructoid.

Hm

By way of IGN, we now know of the existence of Agents of Mayhem, a new game from the developers of Saints Row, Volition.

It'll launch on the usual suspects of PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2017, and will feature a "comic hero universe" setup (with the Agents of M.A.Y.H.E.M. versus the evil L.E.G.I.O.N., as well as open world gameplay. Although it's touted as a "brand new IP," it is set in the Saints universe, much like Kevin Smith's films are in ??the View As??kewniverse (have your cake and eat it too!).

As for the game itself, I loved the over-the-top feel of Saints Row IV like everyone else, but there's such a thing as overdoi??ng it. We'll see.

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