Agents of Mayhem - Volition's post Saints IP

Agents of Mayhem is Volition in top form. If you’ve played Saints Row, you know what you’re in for.

-Tom

“You want me to fuck it up, don’t you? Don’t you?

Wait is this the DLC that’s listed on the steam page? It looked like it was ST themed thing. Plus I couldn’t download it it wouldn’t let me.

Fair enough! I’m definitely willing to take your word for it.

This game reminds me a lot of Crackdown 2. It’s like they didn’t quite "get’ what made SR3/4 the incredible games they were. Every single thing I do in AoM just reminds me how it’s inferior to SR. Like the Ark ability that lets you recall your car every 15s instead of every 60s? (snore) It just reminds me that they’re giving me that lame ability instead of the cool SR ability that added boost to every car.

Every time I drive around the boring city I’m reminded of the cool locations in SR. Every time I clear another cookie-cutter Legion dungeon I’m reminded of the cool set pieces in SR. Every time I get “one shot” in combat I’m reminded that in SR, I really felt like a super hero, because SR didn’t care if you were OP’d.

Tom keeps saying I don’t “get” the combat, and maybe I don’t. At this point I’d argue that that’s Volition’s fault, but whatever. The thing that made SR combat so fun, besides being OP’d, was that I could run around in a string bikini with dragon tattoos, smashing bad guys and send them flying across the street with a giant purple dildo. You can do absolutely nothing like that in AoM, and leveraging “combat synergies” between different characters will never make up for that.

I… I said the same thing.

I’ll take your word for it too :)

I’m not sure what ST stands for. Star Trek? Maybe it’s some pre-order shenanigans? But without downloading stuff, what you see is all you get in terms of character and weapon skins.

Sounds to me like you get the combat just fine. It’s just you’d rather be playing Saints Row. :)

-Tom

There was some discussion earlier about whether this game was expected to bomb or not. There’s now enough Steamspy data around to get an idea of launch sales. Only about 25k owners, so based on past patterns it’ll end up with maybe 50k Steam sales before the heavy discounting starts.

I don’t remember ever seeing a AAA game with early sales numbers this low on Steamspy. Even sales 5x of that seem to lead to sequels being cancelled or studios being closed.

I don’t think this is an “AAA” game. Deep Silver isn’t what I’d consider a AAA publisher, and this game seems squarely aimed at the mid-market.

That said, 25k is pretty low.

I sincerely hope the console numbers are way higher, because, there is an interesting game here. I never liked the Saints games, but this is right up my alley.

AAA is of course a fuzzy term. But it’s a pretty big team (200+ people in development, says the website) and this is their only full-sized game in 4 years. I would have thought mid-market is something like Paradox or Focus Home Interactive.

I really want to like this, but everything moves SO fast that it makes me hideously nauseous! Bummer!

Diego

Greatly enjoying it, but the game does demand a lot of time if you’re going to play it properly.

With kids, and work, I can game sporadically. I was able to put in some hours this weekend, but no marathon sessions. If you aren’t immersing yourself in learning the Agents and poring over the gadgets, skill upgrades, best confluences of Agent - Squad pairings and skill complements, the game devolves into a middle of the road shooter. I can see that there’s a lot of potential in upgrading your team and finding the best Agent combos, I just tend to forget who does what after playing only 2-3 hours every couple of days.

There is a lot of value in the Agent unlocking missions. The characters are smartly created, play uniquely, and have great personality. I’m a little concerned that once they’re all unlocked (I’m on Daisy now, so only a few left) my time constraints will put me off playing much further.

The most horrifying development stemming from Agents of Mayhem was learning my 11 year old son, in the short time I’ve allowed him to watch, favors Hollywood! Somehow my son, a Calvin adherent (of the & Hobbes variety) has found his Calvin-esque sense of self-grandeur manifests itself best in Hollywood’s similar self-perception.

Count me amongst those who are loving it and consider it shamefully under-rated. It’s slick, movement is great, the combat has punch, and I love loot and character builds!

Not that I’ve done much actual character building yet, I’ve mainly been enjoying unlocking them and playing their single character missions.

I just completed Gat’s last night… beautiful. Sure it’s the same old enemy waves, hack, and boss routine, but I love the setup and writing in these two missions. The chief and rookie bots. The robot cops based on Gat’s ‘loose cannon’ persona. Their constant cliched stock phrases … hilarious. :)

Ok, I recant my previous opinion.

Once you start to collect and upgrade more agents and understand the systems better it’s not quite as much a crazy fast free for all & you can slow down and think a bit (which removes my nausea problem).

It’s silly, but I love the goofy voice and art work & am really enjoying it the game now. It has rough edges for sure and I’ve seen plenty of mission breaking bugs, but so far these can be fixed via a reload. Lots of dumb fun!

Diego

There’s a Steam thread from the devs trying to gather data on the audio mix issues, if anyone would like to contribute:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/304530/discussions/0/1471969431583368409/

So I was going to start another spoiler/tactics/character thread but it seems like this doesn’t have much steam around here. So…

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Tactics and combos discussion… Spoilers ahead
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So what’s everyone using? I have a couple of different team combos that are forming, mostly based on the tank\close combat\ranged trio. I also try and have someone with air dash if possible.

One team is an upgraded Braddock, Schezernade, and either Joule or Spear throwing Shotgun Guy (I forgot his name) depending on how close in I might get. This is a great combo with the ninja blinding people, Braddock space lasering them, and a tank to run around. The ninja is so fun to cut people down with, and I’m constantly disappearing and backstabbing people from behind.

Another fun combo is Rama, Yeti and Red Card. I didn’t like Red Card at first but he’s grown on me. That combo gun really comes in useful, its like having two characters in one. He special is pretty weak though.

This game is not exactly what so thought, which was a superhero game. Instead we have a kick ass action rpg. I think the fighting is mega fun, it flows well.

When things get a bit hectic and I need to get my bearings, I push the select button on my controller. This activates the in-game options (to go back to the Ark or to upgrade your squad, etc.), and actually pauses the action. It’s useful to take a breather and see precisely where the enemies are, what your currently selected character’s status is as far as shields, health, and mayhem are concerned, etc.

If all else fails: run away for a bit. LEGION troopers tend to be a lot slower.

Good ideas, and yes it has gotten somewhat better as I’ve gotten used to the characters and systems.

I finished it after about 50 hours, including getting all chars to level 20. Even the shitty ones, like Joule. I enjoyed it, but this game is completely forgettable. There is nothing memorable about it.

The city is terrible. It’s tiny, boring, and everything respawns. This is not your typical OCD “checking off everything on the map,” because there’s no point. It will all come back. So why even bother? They do this of course, because it’s an ARPG grind and you need to have to stuff to do to level up your guys. Whatever. I just focused on Legion bases because it seemed to be the best XP and loot.

The villains were OK, but forgettable. I kept mentally comparing them to their Overwatch versions, D.Va and Reinhardt.

By the end of the game I truly hated your allies on the Ark, Friday, Gremlin, and Mixer – whom I didn’t recognize for the longest time because, really, who wastes time in a training room? They were extremely annoying and would not STFU.

I spent most of the game wishing I had a rocket launcher so I could unleash some actual mayhem, like in all the games that preceded this one. So, so many times I was on the street and would watch a Legion car drive by, unable to do anything about it. But then I realized I was supposed to use Gremlin tech in lieu of rocket launchers. Except, I spent the whole game with one and only one Gremlin tech - the Mulligan. Because on difficulty ten and above, you can absolutely go from full health to dead in 2-3 seconds. You can switch Gremlin tech at will, I think, but it’s still a pita to do so. So I stuck with the Mulligan. The whole game.

Pick this one up on sale, and go in with lowered expectations. I’m going to go reinstall Saints Row 3.