Agents of Mayhem is a third person shooter set in an open world map of Seoul; it offers a plethora of different characters to play as, each having its own theme and abilities and an absolutely ridiculous plotline.

The characters are a multicultural bunch and go from a Hollywood star (funnily enough he’s called Hollywood) to a football hooligan to a ninja, an assassin, an iceman, an bow wielding doctor and many more. The best thing is that every one of them does feel different to play as. You can put three characters in your playable squad at once to keep things interesting if you ever get bored of one theme. The most unique things about the characters are their Mayhem abilities which are often bright, sometimes explosive and come with a little cutscene, these can be filled over time or by collecting a Mayhem Fleur which also heals and revives teammates.

As for the plot, well… that’s a bit weird. The agency known as Mayhem is trying to stop another faction called Legion taking over the world, in order to do this the agents must fight through the bosses which are: an inventor, a DJ, a cyborg, a K-pop group, a crazy woman and the evil Doctor Babylon himself. The events within all this are so weird and interesting that I don’t want to write anymore in case I spoil it although I do think that weddings are nice.

There are many ways to get around the city of Seoul but I found the agency car to be the quickest, a car that seems to be a mix of the Arkham knight car and Kit from Knight rider. It can be changed to have different appearances with both shape and colour choices being given to the player.

Of course there were some issues with the game like NPCs clipping into walls, sometimes a door would shut at the wrong time forcing a reload and occasionally there was so much going on that the framerate would drop

There is so much to see and do in this game that I find it amazing, it has the silliness of a Saints Row game and the open exploration and wild fun of Crackdown. Going from stupid to serious in seconds as you go from stories about dark matter to ones about space lasers to drugs and saving footballers it left me amazed at how well the plot was written for those events to be connected and when there were flaws or plot-holes the game was self-aware enough to make fun of them. The game wasn’t deep or trying to get a message across, it was just trying to be fun and that’s exactly what it was with its triple jumping and weird idea combinations that felt like the company had just found all its unfinished games and rammed them into one. I really enjoyed my time with it.

I have left some things unmentioned but that’s because I could probably spend a long, long time writing trying to get it all in but something really interesting is the inclusion of an unconfronted villain known as Morningstar also hints that there may be a sequel on the way, I am looking forward to it.

 

The art that I’m using as the featured image was found on the achievements section of the Xbox website. It shows the characters that you start out with in the foreground with Doctor Babylon lording over everything in the background and Mayhem battling legion in the middle, pretty good in my opinion.