Agents of Mayhem (PC) Review

Caution: those who hate the colour purple better keep their distance from this. Sure, it's full of testosterone, big guns, fast cars, and loud explosions, but purple never leaves the screen for a second, as it can be found almost everywhere - but enough with the pointless digression. Agents of Mayhem is basically a third-person shooter that has you in control of those said agents; agents who must make a stereotypical team of bad guys leave the city of Seoul, and at any cost.

Rule number one? Never, ever, ever let your brain take this seriously. Volition's Seoul is one that takes place in a universe heavily inspired by the action cartoons of the past, and thus everything is purposely ridiculous and clichéd, from the evil forces of L.E.G.I.O.N. to Mayhem's hero cast, which consists of a hunky, Johnny Cage-wannabe, a foulmouthed hard rock babe, a stereotypical black man, and a hardboiled Latina, amongst others.

A TNT-filled explosive piece of guilty fun that pays homage to '80s action tropes, then. This should be fun, right? Well, before delving into the gameplay, in terms of presentation alone this feels kind of… dry. Again, the problem isn't the lack of seriousness. This has to be that Agents of Mayhem just doesn't have what it takes to be as enjoyable as it thinks it is. Double-entendres about giant balls, jokes about Uranus, extremely stereotypical villains and heroes, and so on; all this could be great, but the delivery of it all is kind of off - worth a chuckle here and there, but nothing more than that.

What's an even bigger shame, however, is how boring the missions are; the main missions, especially. Picture this: you are driving your Kit-like supercar at breakneck speeds, and a giant space laser hunts you down from the freaking sky! How does it feel? Like a chore! It's not fun, it's not exciting, it's not challenging. It's just one of the many steps between the intro and the finishing line; just another box to tick… And that's the thing with this title: it has 100 hours' worth of boxes to tick, but none are particularly fun to do so.

In other words, everything here feels like filler. There are tons of things to do, from gathering crafting materials and finding rare items, to doing mini-quests or just cruising around, but it's all mildly entertaining at best. In comparison, just driving a car in a Grand Theft Auto instalment manages to be far more gratifying, even though it's less "loud" than anything available here. Moreover, this game world feels very much like a set - as if it was an afterthought. It has no… "soul," if that makes any sense.

It's all good-looking, sure (although a bit of a system hog for what's on offer), and yet everything feels more like a waste of budget. To put it simply, Agents of Mayhem cares more about flash, rather than substance. Nowhere that becomes more obvious that the central part of the game, the gunfights, with the first problem being their low challenge, and while there are more than 10 difficulty settings to choose from, these just turn foes into tougher bullet sponges, without any difference in terms of IQ.

What's sad is how this all feels that it could be so much better with just a bit of polish here and there. You see, it's not just the fact that all missions feel the same; it's not that the L.E.G.I.O.N. lairs that must be braved are almost identical; and it's not how there are only a bunch of simplistic goons to shoot down. The main issue is that, even in regards with its main gimmick, Agents of Mayhem's level of disappointment is sky-high.

The most important mechanic at hand is the ability to instantly swap between your agents with the push of a button. Unfortunately, while these fellows look very diverse, they aren't. Yes, each one has a unique set of abilities, but, at their core, agents are just a bunch of health bars with different lengths, or guns with different ranges and damage rates. Combined with the lacklustre mission and world design, this makes things even more repetitive… and just not worth your time.