If you haven't taken a look at our prose dedicated to the game yet, let's remember that Agents of Mayhem is an open-world action TPS that allows the player to wander through Neo-Seoul, a reinterpretation of the South-Eastern capital. Korean without much connection to the real city. Bad luck for humanity, a terrorist organization called Legion, led by the infamous Doctor Babylon, has decided to take control of the planet. Fortunately, the Agents of Mayhem led by Persephone Brimstone (a vamp that makes us think furiously of Jessica Rabbit and that we could see in a DLC of Saints Row IV) are there to put things back in order. This is a team of a dozen heroes that we will be able to play by composing a team of three, in which it will be possible to switch from one character to another on the fly. Each agent has characteristics that can make him more effective against certain types of enemies, and which will above all define his personality. Between Hollywood the narcissistic handsome, Braddock the army instructor with the cigar, Red Card the football hooligan or even Daisy, the Roller Derby player equipped with a gateling, the cast has a certain charm, especially since all of them the agents have a background provided. Each character, whether it's the first three or the ones you unlock later, has its own missions, which allows you to emphasize your personality and know the motivations that led you to join. the Mayhem. Cartoon-style cutscenes are also present to allow us to dive into the atmosphere and the universe of each protagonist, which partly compensates for the overall rather generic chara-design offered by the game. Finally, the coolest remains the personalized dialogues, which means that depending on your choices you can enjoy quite tasty punchlines.
NEO-SOULÉ
Seduced by the completely crazy atmosphere of Saints Row 4, we imagined that in four years the developers would have had time to write whole books of jokes, and we could already see ourselves in the process of blissing out in front of our screen . Unfortunately, it seems that the flood of illicit substances that flooded Champaign's studio in Illinois suddenly dried up. Indeed, Agents of Mayhem is devilishly wiser than the previous series, even to the point of becoming too smooth and lacking in personality. Neo-Seoul is the most glaring example because this city which acts as an open world will clearly not mark the spirits, whether it is the level-design or the impression of emptiness that it is. get out of it. The NPCs are all cloned and roam like zombies through the city, with meaningless behavior. We often see them being hit by road traffic without much happening. Very utilitarian, the map is ultimately only used to host the various quests and side missions that form the bulk of the schedule in Agents of Mayhem. The game therefore offers a main plot with a scenario that will mark your mind as lastingly as a stain of jam on an oilcloth, while the side quests do not shine by their realization, nor by the rather useless loot they offer. Indeed, we have never found ourselves in difficulty to the point of having to farm equipment or skill points for our hero, so why waste time in the research and development system offered by the organization of Persephone. Out of the clashes and the way to respond in the dialogues, the choice of your character will have little impact on the course of the game. After a few hours of unlocking the whole team, you quickly end up selecting your three favorite characters before doing the whole game with them.
The other pitfall of Neo-Seoul is that the city does not have fast-travel points, which will force the player to spend long hours driving his car or a hastily stolen car in traffic. An obligatory passage which quickly becomes drunk as the driving is so bad, more rigid than a steel bar and with a physics defying everything you were taught about mechanical forces at school. These vehicles are moreover only a pretext to make us taste the joys of road combat which is simply limited to putting bumper blows in enemy vehicles, like an ersatz of Burnout which would have seen its development relocated - no not in Seoul but rather in Pyongyang, given the dumpers of bugs encountered on the road. Agents of Mayhem has a mediocre technique at best, with a cartoon design and rather poor graphic effects, to the point that we still do not understand how the GTX 1080Ti of our test machine could end up at 98% charge playing at 1080p. We will pass over the repeated crashes of the game (and even of the PC with a Windows crash, which had not happened to us for a long time) to focus on what could have been a nice city if the development budget had followed. The worst symptom ultimately remains the countless dens that we must explore to undermine the influence of Legion at the root, and which are only one and the same place that we will have to go through dozens of times without the slightest change, if not the location of the lens. The latter are also sorely lacking in inspiration since in 80% of cases it will be a question of hacking into a terminal (a mini-game where you have to click when a cursor lines up with a yellow zone), while the remaining 20% of objectives will consist of activating an interface and then killing waves of enemies.
Combat is the only breath of fresh air given to the player. With a triple jump and dash system, the clashes are finally an opportunity to have fun frankly by rushing from one enemy to another and passing from one hero to another to try to exterminate the vermin in a record time.
The fight is also the only breath of air given to the player. With a triple jump and dash system, the clashes are finally an opportunity to have fun frankly by rushing from one enemy to another and passing from one hero to another to try to exterminate the vermin in a record time. In addition to the basic attack, each agent has a special attack subject to a 10 second cooldown and an ultimate blow (the Mayhem) which can be sent once the corresponding gauge is filled. Again, each character has his specialty with an orbital strike for Braddock, an action scene with explosions for Hollywood or a super-turret for Joule. If the enemies are not frankly lights, their number allows however to propose an interesting challenge, without ever becoming punitive. To come across a respectable AI, you will have to wait for the boss fights (one per chapter) where the patterns will vary. Nevertheless, there too we will never struggle, and to illustrate this, know that in 18 hours of play we died (death of the three members of the team) only once. We must also salute the life of the title which seems quite important to us thanks to the many side quests. It remains to be seen whether you will really want to platinum Agents of Mayhem.
