C Agents of Mayhem there was an extremely interesting story: being the first for a long time a new project from the company Volition (authors Saints Row), the game remained indirectly connected with the old universe. At the same time, the first commercials seriously confused the players, and they began to perceive the game almost as a "new Overwatch". To understand what happened from the Volition pen, we will try right now, but one thing is certain: Agents of Mayhem is one of the most crazy games to date.
In order to understand what Agents of Mayhem is, let's go back to 2006. It was then exclusively for the Xbox 360 console came the very first game of the Saints Row series. On the wave of success of the GTA: San Andreas, many developers at the time wanted to do "just as cool" (agree, the years have passed, but nothing has changed). Among the volunteers were the Volition guys who laid the foundation for the series and came up with a gang of Saints from 3rd Street. The gameplay then was not much different from any GTA-like game, offering to explore the open world of the town of Stillwater, which was at the same time like Detroit and Chicago. On the side of the already mentioned Saints, the player was invited to take part in gang warfare, the struggle for the districts and other "joys of life" of the criminal world.
The game was to the taste of the players, but the developers themselves realized that it was almost impossible to beat the Rockstar creations on their own field, so with each new part Saints Row more and more went to the insane gameplay with a bunch of humor, references to mass culture and a complete lack of realism. But with maximum fun and variety. Having reached the climax of video game schizophrenia in a large-scale independent DLC for Saints Row 4 called Gat Out Of Hell, the developers needed to move on. But where, if during the previous games of the series the heroes managed to visit hell, on the Moon and in some analogue of the Matrix? And one of the main protagonists Johnny Gat tried on the mask of a gangster, an actor, an astronaut and even a president of the United States of America?
And then the Agents of Chaos (in the original MAYHEM - Multinational AgencY Hunting Evil Masterminds), the main characters of the game, appear on the stage. More precisely, they do not go out immediately, but after the ending Gat Out Of Hell, in which the protagonist met with God himself, and he "rolled back" time back, but with one small exception: there are no more Saints on the 3rd street. And once in the town of Stillwater we have nothing more to do, the scene is transferred to Seoul, which is called "the city of the future".
The capital of South Korea, represented in the game, really looks very futuristic. Here and there you see giant skyscrapers, lit by neon lights, robotic cleaners scurry down the streets. Cars, although they do not fly, but look like guests from the future with streamlined body lines and wheels, as if printed on a 3D printer. All this futuristic setting seeks to destroy the organization LEGION (LEGION - the League of Evil Gentlemen Intent on Obliterating Nations). At first glance, the composition of the LEGION and Chaos Agents includes the most common characters. But this happens exactly until the moment you begin to get to know them better.
And you will have to get acquainted for almost the whole game. The fact is that in the course of the narrative you will get the opportunity to recruit a team of 12 agents (the 13th agent, the well-known Johnny Gat, is available exclusively pre-ordered the game). At the same time, you can take only three heroes to the task, switching between them is done instantly by pressing one button. Each character has both standard melee and ranged attacks, as well as one unique skill, as well as a special ultra-power of Chaos, which carries everything around with a fair amount of creativity. For example, one of the three initial characters named Hollywood during the "ulta" under the pathos music from the militants shoots the enemies. Hollywood is a former movie star, with which his personal story is related. Talking about the abilities and biographies of the characters would be a crime, as this is one of the best that is in the game. Almost every story is filled with insane humor and a bunch of references. And the game itself literally bursts with the number of Easter eggs: on one only the main base of Agents of Chaos (not so large in size of the location), I managed to find their pieces five, provided that I did not specifically look for anything.
There is a reverse side to the great variety of heroes: a small piece of the story is devoted to the origin of each character, and often the story of the hero with the main line is very weakly connected. 3-4 missions for the newly discovered character, we will have to defend control points, ride a car and beat off waves of pouring enemies. Now multiply these numbers by the number of agents, and you will get almost 40 missions, similar to each other as two drops of water. And this, for a second, almost half the game. And it is not clear where the corporate diversity of Volition went to them, because there are no problems in the main story line with gay madness. So it turns out that, after chasing the number, the developers forgot about the quality, making a reward for the monotonous shooting of enemies funny video with the personal history of the secondary character. So self-promotion, to be honest.
The game is an extremely controversial physical model of the behavior of cars, which seems to have migrated from Saints Row 3. The cars practically do not differ from each other (except for the maximum speed and speed of acceleration), and their management is extremely arcade and uninteresting. And if in the saga of the Saints we were constantly entertained by non-trivial racing races combined with shooting, then in Agents of Mayhem we are almost not spoiled like that. The picture in the game does not have enough stars from the sky, but it looks neat and quite beautiful. Cartoon pose well suits the reckless style of the game and does not harm the atmosphere at all. Apparently, it was some "cartoonishness" coupled with the unique abilities of the characters that made gamers draw analogies with Overwatch.
I was somewhat disappointed with the in-game radio. On the commercials, in which the melodies and rhythms of the foreign stage of the 80's mixed with the music from the TV series "Team A", "Private Detective Magnum", "Knight of the Roads" and others, the impression was that the soundtrack would be appropriate in the game. It turned out that nothing even closely resembles the game. Once in the car, you will listen to some expressionless "tut-tuts" ambient, occasionally interrupted by completely unremarkable tracks. This is doubly strange, because the developers have a taste. The same music in the videos sounds just fine.
Sometimes it seems that Volition spent a lot of time creating different and unlike characters, forgetting about the world in which these characters are. Virtual Seoul does not "breathe" at all. NPCs hang around idly, without even trying to portray at least some miserable semblance of "life." The city is almost as deserted as in the Need For Speed game series. Only if in the works of EA we had to run around the streets and look around there was no time, then in the Agents the emptiness and lifelessness are constantly striking.
Extremely ambiguous looks and the decision of developers to abandon the multiplayer. In the game a lot of characters from which you could collect dozens of unlike "setups" for virtual battles. Moreover, everything has to do with this: Volition has already been made a hurricane co-op in their games, and a quick switch between different agents and a combination of their abilities would have made it possible to arrange enchanting fights in the company of friends and against them.
There was a game and no pumping. With each new level, agents can use various gadgets that improve performance (the accumulation time of "ulta", its duration, etc.), and also receive active and passive skills such as shield regeneration or ammunition increase. But even here there is a "fly in the ointment". The fact is that only those agents that you take on the task are being pumped, so, having decided to change the team, you will have to start from scratch. Such a decision is frustrating, considering that missions are becoming more complicated with time, and "in business" you want to try every character. Why it was impossible to "spy" colleagues and give points of improvement to all agents at once - personally, I'm not entirely clear.
With all this it is clear that Agents of Mayhem is a very important product for developers. They staged a large-scale advertising campaign not only on the Internet, but also in real life. The forces of the domestic publisher in the face of the company "Buka" a few weeks before the release of journalists were invited to a closed show of the game, where it was possible to evaluate its pre-release version and learn a lot of interesting details. This happens infrequently, so I want to express my gratitude to Buka for such a wonderful opportunity. At the presentation, by the way, there was an amusing moment: when I shared my impressions of the game with representatives of the publishing house, I noticed between the case that at the very beginning of the game there are flaws in translation in the form of non-compliance with cases and times. Playing in the final version of Agents of Mayhem before writing this review, I did not find any more translations. I do not know if the localizers corrected the mistake due to the fact that I pointed it out, or it was the merit of the domestic testers, but it turned out very pleasantly.
A couple of words about localization: translated only the text in the game, but it was done on a very good level with the presence, that is important, of abusive words. And they are exactly where they should be. Personally, I was always amazed at why "strong" expressions are constantly translated as "pancakes" or "hell" when developers had in mind a completely different one. Do not get me wrong, I'm not a supporter of the mat. But I consider it an expressive artistic device, the presence of which can emphasize the nature of the character or some piquancy of the situation. In the translation of Agents of Mayhem, everything is localized according to the "canon", but without search and departure to dull foul language. Very good quality work.
Pros:
- Enough interesting gameplay.
- Variety of missions of the main campaign.
- More than a dozen unique characters with unique abilities.
- Pleasant branded humor of the studio Volition.
- Qualitative localization.
- Pleasant stylized graphics.
- Interesting characters and stories of characters.
Minuses:
- Missions to unlock operatives were made "for a copy."
- Quite an arcade model of the behavior of cars.
- Empty and lifeless open world.
- The lack of multiplayer wherever it fits perfectly.
- Not everyone will like the absence of Russian speech.
- Inexpressive music.
Agents of Mayhem extremely ambiguous game. On the one hand, some missions are not devoid of a remarkable creative, but on the other - almost half of these missions are stories of heroes, during which you will perform the same actions. Having on hands different from each other characters of different classes with unique abilities, the developers for some unknown reason refused to introduce multiplayer into the game. The plot is quite possible to run, without changing the trinity of heroes given to you at the very beginning of the game. Firm humor of the series, again, is hidden under a layer of similar tasks like twins, and those jokes that there are in the plot missions are definitely not enough. The list of contradictions can be continued, but, returning to the beginning of the review, I want to say that Agents of Mayhem is the most crazy game to date. The second such is not present, and from an event on the screen it is possible to receive weight of pleasure. From me the game gets 7.5 points out of 10 . Let's hope that the project will not fail in sales and in the second part of Volition will fix everything that prevents the game from getting a higher rating. After all, do not be above the shortcomings, the Agents could well get a full eight, or even a nine.
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