Last week the new Volition title Agents of Mayhem hit the shelves. All things considered, this game was a huge disappointment to me. It was the culmination of every bad decision the company had made concerning their most marketable franchise. To really understand AOM I think it's important to understand the Saints Row series and my relationship with it over time.
When I was starting my freshman year of high school, I'd been going through many changes. My style and tastes shifted dramatically as I started to find myself gravitating to stories about crime. There was something about a group of people working outside the law to achieve their own selfish gains that struck a chord with a 13-year-old pimple faced Chris Guarino.
All of this really started because of a little Xbox 360 sandbox crime game called Saints Row. It was a simple game, one very similar to Grand Theft Auto. My parents didn't let me but GTA as a kid so I had to settle for Saints Row. In the game, you play as an unnamed silent protagonist that you get to create. Your character was the player. The player could project them onto this character and really invest themselves in the game, in narrative and gameplay.
The Playa, as your character is known throughout the title, works his way into the newly formed Third Street Saints gang to combat the violence striking the neighborhood of Saints Row. You work your way taking out rival gangs until you run the city inside and out. By the end of the game, you run the fictional city of Stilwater, nobody else. After the credits rolled, I was eager to get my hands on the sequel: Saints Row 2.
SR2 is one of the greatest games I've ever played, period. It expands on everything that made SR such a fun and fulfilling experience. The characters are given more depth and the city has grown significantly. The world feels alive as each locale is filled to the brim with detail and different kinds of people. Drug addicts and homeless people cover Sunnyvale, many of whom might attack onsight. Men and women in business suits, among many cops and private security, cover the refurbished Ultor district.
Your character is now the boss of the Saints and it's up to you to reclaim what's rightfully yours from those who took it away. It's a great story, told very well and reinforced by gameplay. Every time I go back to it I find it even more fun than previous playthroughs. It's one of those rare games that have aged beautifully.
Next came Saints Row: The Third and everything changed. The story went from quirky crime drama to outright parody. The gameplay took on a much more over the top tone. The art style was even changed to make SR3 look like a Saturday morning cartoon. While I enjoyed the game, it paled in comparison to its predecessors. Not only was it remarkably short but it pretty much spat in the face of everything that had been established up to that point in the series.
Instead of taking back your city you're trying to usurp another criminal empire in another city, Steelport. Compared to the diverse streets of Stilwater, Steelport definitely feels like a one horse town. Every civilian and enemy type looks the same with very little variation. There's nowhere to really explore. Outside of the main story and the side quests, there's really not much to do here. While I enjoyed the story, it left a sour taste in my mouth that really wasn't washed out until the outright carnival insanity of Saints Row IV.
By all accounts, I expected to hate SR4. Each game, including The Third, had some significance and relevance to an overall theme of the criminal takeover. Each city involved taking over a town piece by piece and taking down anyone who dares stand in the way of that goal. You're the villain of the story but you look awesome while doing it. SR4 involves your character becoming president of the US and fighting aliens inside of a Matrix-type simulation using superpowers. This was as far of a departure as I was expecting. After the sour taste SR3 left I didn't expect much.
Without saying too little or too much about the game, I'll say I was surprised. It was a great game in its own right. Fun and self-referential enough for fans to know it was all a love letter to those who stuck with the series this far. It was supposed to be the conclusion of the series and while it wasn't the perfect dive I was expecting, it certainly wasn't a flop.
When the credits of SR4 rolled I was ready to move on. College was about to begin and I was packing my things. Then, almost out of nowhere, Volition released a trailer for a new Saints Row. Namely, Gat out of Hell. It was a spin-off title centered around fan favorite Johnny Gat who goes into Hell to save your player character. This was probably the worst entry in the series by far. Gone was the customizable character, gone was the fun and interesting story. All that was left was an uninteresting game world and some cool superpowers.
All of that brings us to here and now where Volition has once again released a Saints Row spin-off title, Agents of Mayhem. The game centers on a group of new heroes fighting off the evil forces of LEGION in Seoul, South Korea. Each character brings something new to the table, with a total of 12 playable ones to mix and match each mission. Again, it's a ton of fun with not much substance.
As is Volition’s usual style since SR2, Mayhem feels like eating a big pile of icing. Sure, it's tasty and satisfying but you're ultimately left empty and wondering why you even bothered. The story is nonexistent and the world is too bland to make the gameplay interesting. Every mission essentially revolves around the same three goals: infiltrate base, blow something up, defend a post, kill enemies, rinse and repeat. Nothing about Mayhem really stands out either.
It fails to branch out from its older brother Saints Row or any other series of its type. By feeling too similar to Crackdown or Overwatch, it doesn't succeed at being unique and made me want to play those other games instead. There are moments of fun sprinkled throughout and enough callbacks and references to make any Saints Row fan happy but it's simply not enough.
I essentially gave a retrospective of the Saints Row series to give you an idea of what this game really means. It's not a mediocre third person team shooter, it's more than that. It's the end of a long road that started with Saints Row all the way back in 2006. It started as a humble franchise with good story and gameplay and ended as a shell of what it once was, wrapping itself in a Jean Claude Van-Damme-esque vision of badassery. Instead of simply being cool, Volition tried too hard to make it cool.
What's sad is that by departing from a specific vision to make everyone happy, Volition ultimately created a bland product that satisfies nobody except companies who have made games like Agents of Mayhem already.
I would give a more in-depth review but there's not much to say about Agents of Mayhem. It's sad because peering underneath the surface is a fun, interesting Saints Row title. Each agent has personality and is a blast to play. Without the motivation or story behind it though, there isn't much reason to care or want to play. Saints Row made its goofy group of thugs feel like family. You cared about them equally and knew what they were all about. If Saints Row is a Thanksgiving dinner with family and loved ones, Agents of Mayhem is Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of strangers who try too hard to make the dinner great without even cooking the turkey. It's a Saturday morning cartoon wrapped in 90s cereal commercials. It's a poor excuse for a game in 2017, when titles like Hellblade or Injustice 2 transcend the medium and create something really special. It's not Saints Row, but in the grand scheme of things it seems like nobody at Volition ever knew what that meant to begin with.
