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[IbizaPocholo]

Carving out a niche in an oversaturated market has never been easy, yet developer Volition managed to do so with its open-world series Saints Row, even while in direct competition with the juggernaut that is Grand Theft Auto. The success of Saints Row very much counts as an underdog story, one wherein the power of unique branding proved instrumental to a product’s ability to defeat the odds. Though the franchise’s last few outings made it seem as though the 3rd Street Saints regularly battled identity crises, that level of chaos, which in turn fostered variety, is what endeared fans the most. Unfortunately, whatever identity crisis beset Agents of Mayhem did it absolutely no favors.

Billed as a departure from Saints Row, despite overt references to that very IP, Agents of Mayhem served as another example of Volition’s attempt to craft its own niche. Leveraging its expertise with open-world adventures, the studio incorporated elements from hero-based titles into its repertoire. Still, the promise of novel gameplay ideas did little to intrigue potential customers, many of whom already had their fill of hero shooters by the time Agents of Mayhem arrived. And Saints Row fans longing for a fifth installment were left confused by a marketing campaign that targeted them, yet failed to illustrate what the Agents of Mayhem experience actually entailed.

But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Not every game succeeds, and not every studio hits the mark with each new release, even if its past output seems nothing short of stellar. Missteps happen. Volition just so happened to stumble during a pivotal season of change.

This is the tragedy of Agents of Mayhem.

0:00 Intro
1:59 Sponsorship
3:20 Video

 

[TVexperto]

i enjoyed agents of mayhem more than the latest saints row games. the abilities, the graphics, the city, the characters were much more interesting and fun to play

 

[March Climber]

i enjoyed agents of mayhem more than the latest saints row games. the abilities, the graphics, the city, the characters were much more interesting and fun to play

To me it suffered the same issue as MGS V. The gameplay was incredible but the story and characters left me wanting.

 

[mitch1971]

Bought for a fiver a while back; haven't popped it in the machine yet.

 

[eastcoastkody]

not a good game. the world is one of the worst open worlds i've ever seen. Some of the playable characters were cool. Missions were bad. Enemies were even worse.

 

[Umbasaborne]

I love saints row 3 and 4, but i always thought this looked lame. Im looking forward to the new game though, and i hope its a hit for them

 

[Husky]

Man, the gameplay in that one was real underwhelming. Level design was pretty awful, mostly the same cut-and-paste assets, I think it resembled what I've seen from some indoor levels in The Avengers. Every aspect of it was a huge downgrade from Saints Row: The Third. SR3 had really great driving controls, had a nice sense of speed and tight drifting, no clue how they made it feel so much worse for Agents of Mayhem.
The humor really sucked. The dialogue was just awful. I think I muted the voice acting shortly before quitting, to see if that would improve the experience. There were a few things to like, a couple characters I'd enjoy playing for a short while, but after a few hours of completely unengaging missions, I uninstalled the game.
I wouldn't call it a trash game, it just felt like a semi-decent asset flip, which isn't what I want to spend my time with. The sorta game that's not even trying to provide its own experience, just another familiar loop of trying to clear the map's tasks, and get numbers to go up.

 

[anthraticus]

2 is the only game I like in this series

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

SR went downhill after SR3. Even SR3 was on the border of being far too goofy to be enjoyable.

Quite how this dev thought it was reasonable to base a spin-off game on such a throwaway universe that gamers had long stopped caring about is truly baffling.

But then again, considering what SR5 looks like, it doesn't surprise me that Volition could be so out of touch to think that AoM might be a success. They deliberately went ahead to design SR5 for woke thinking that the incumbent SR fanbase (of all fucking fanbases) would respond positively to SR5 woke hipster BS.

 

[Ezquimacore]

Agents of mayhem is a cool entertaining game, I enjoyed it when I bought it for $20 or less years ago.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

I wonder if Volition can survive a sales failure with Saints Row 2022.

Like it or not, Saints Row IV was a commercial success, but that was 9 years ago. I guess Gat out of Hell also made money because it was practically a Saints Row IV DLC so its production costs were probably low.

But Agents of Mayhem was a failure (300k copies..) that led Volition to reduce their workforce by 15%. For Saints Row 2022 they inflated their studio's size to even larger numbers than they had on Agents of Mayhem or any Saints Row title.
Considering how software develpment costs increased in the past 4 years, Deep Silver is investing a lot more on this remake than they ever did on this studio, and it's a studio that just came from a sales failure.

How is Deep Silver going to handle Volition if they fail two expensive games in a row?