• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Agents of Mayhem bombs in the UK (shocking news /s)

patchday

Member
reviews were pretty bad, the game doesn't looks good too, it was a sure thing.

if only they looked like traditional superheroes I would've prioritized the purchase more. But looks like everyone has a gun in their hands so it was just one more reason I added to my list of games to buy on sale
 

Tunahead

Member
I just thought of something really funny: You could totally replace "Mayhem" with "Maybe" for comic effect! I should send this joke to IGN to see if they'll hire me.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Good. If we're lucky, this cookie cutter multiplayer only bullshit will continue to bomb and maybe this industry will finally wake up
One of the game's primary sales problems is they took the co-op out, which Saints Row had and was an incredibly popular feature of the game.
 

Coolade

Member
I've been enjoying this game on PC. I'd huh...describe it as the mad max of saints row. If you enjoyed that game you'll enjoy this. There isn't much depth but the gameplay is really solid and enjoyable.
 

PillarEN

Member
Ouch. Friend from high school worked on this game. I'd see posts on Facebook from time to time. Never knew it was tied to Saints Row. Never knew it wasn't a multiplayer only shooter.
 

patchday

Member
Good. If we're lucky, this cookie cutter multiplayer only bullshit will continue to bomb and maybe this industry will finally wake up

I wish this game had coop I would've made a way to buy it asap to play with my friend. But since its single player only I was like nah I already got a bunch of SP games I need to complete. He did the same so neither of us got it
 

Mark L

Member
I'd like to play the game! But $60 plus tax is a lot of money for me right now. I think it is for a lot of people.
 

Strings

Member
Good. If we're lucky, this cookie cutter multiplayer only bullshit will continue to bomb and maybe this industry will finally wake up

sb3hn4.gif
 

sibarraz

Banned
I thought that saints row had enough brand recognition to carry a game made by the same studio.

Seems like this not always works
 

Lashley

Why does he wear the mask!?
Looks so unbelievably bland. Gameplay videos and reviews have done nothing to sway me either.
 
Not reallt, no one seemed interested in the premise to begin with. Can't really blame marketing for failing to sell a product no one wanted from the get go.

You absolutely can, considering nobody even knew what the game was to form an opinion to begin with. There are still people in this very topic that thought it was a multiplayer shooter.
 

Falchion

Member
It seems like a fun game, but one I'm content to wait to get when it's on sale in a few months since I have plenty to keep me busy right now.
 
You absolutely can, considering nobody even knew what the game was to form an opinion to begin with. There are still people in this very topic that thought it was a multiplayer shooter.
Fair enough, but everyone who knew what it was wasn't interested either. The marketing was bad, but the game clearly didn't appeal to many people either.
 
Whoever ran the marketing of this game should be fired. They sank the entire project.

I was super interested in this game during it's initial reveal, and even the first actual game-showing trailer. The problem was once they started showing gameplay, it was clear that the game was just dated. It looks like something from 10 years ago (not in terms of graphics- those are fine, but in terms of how it plays and what you do).

And then when they confirmed their game didn't have any co-op multiplayer, which was one of the main draws of the Saint's Row games, I had to give it a pass.

Agents of Mayhem's only redeeming factor is it's got a nice visual style with some cool looking characters. That's about it. Nothing else about this game appeals to anyone, and the marketing team probably did the best they could with a real mediocre product.
 
Would calling it saints row really change its appeal? I've never been a fan of the saints row games but this seems to play nothing like them .

Is saints row a huge seller ? I've always thought it had a poor mans gta stigma , this seems like a more acrimony saints row minus all the filth (dildos etc)

Seems like it suffers from not really knowing what it wants to be , elements of mobas , coop style gameplay without any actual coop (bizarre). Trying to make borderlands personalities with bad writing etc

Don't mean to be harsh on the game , by all accounts it's actually a fun (albeit repetitive) game , but I don't think it's worth a full price .
 

FHIZ

Member
Yeah, I was positive on this initially. Nothing amazing and gameplay seemed fun... but it didn't even touch it this weekend and had plenty of time to. It just ended up being pretty bland despite all the characters.

I dislike a lot of the core loop it just got repetitive real quickly. Also some mechanics just didn't seem fleshed out. There's all these Crackdown/SR IV type power ups all over the city, but the lack of mobility with a weak triple jump doesn't make them that fun to collect. I also think the game is ridiculously bad at telling you you're low on health. Ive had characters die without me even knowing they were low because everything gets so frantic and then whoops, one rogue explosion and I'm dead.

Yeah... annoyances just started piling up, and then none of the game's characters or writing was enough to hook me. Real close to uninstalling it.
 
That's too bad.

I rented it from Gamefly, only to enjoy it so much I returned it the next day and bought a brand new copy.

Really fun in short bursts. Hopefully when the sales come the units will start moving.
 

Big_Al

Unconfirmed Member
I was super interested in this game during it's initial reveal, and even the first actual game-showing trailer. The problem was once they started showing gameplay, it was clear that the game was just dated. It looks like something from 10 years ago (not in terms of graphics- those are fine, but in terms of how it plays and what you do).

And then when they confirmed their game didn't have any co-op multiplayer, which was one of the main draws of the Saint's Row games, I had to give it a pass.

Agents of Mayhem's only redeeming factor is it's got a nice visual style with some cool looking characters. That's about it. Nothing else about this game appeals to anyone, and the marketing team probably did the best they could with a real mediocre product.

I understand it not being to everyones taste but I don't agree in the slightest with it being dated. With 12/13 different agents with different abilities and various RPG (albeit not too deep) mechanics at play I don't see what's outdated about it tbh. Unless you consider the notion of just shooting things outdated.
 

tebunker

Banned
from listening to several podcasts this week the game sounded like it had this great core but was surrounded by a ton of bad design choices for choosing new characters, finding characters, side missions etc.

it honestly sounds like they had one plan to begin with, did a lot of work in that direction and then someone new came in to lead the project and went a different direction. or they made changes based on bad marketing groups. Just hearing about the amount of time you spend out of the game world and traversing menus tells me they had design issues.

I would like to play this but I am not gonna spend $60 or even $48 with gcu on it. Unless they massively update the UI. Hell if they were smart they'd lay low, fix the ui, add co-op and re-release as a super special edition in 8 months when there isn't anyhing else out for like $40-$50 with some more content. Salvage what is good and salvage the game.
 
They won't add co-op because it would ruin the balance of the game. It was designed with single player in mind.

Not to mention it wouldn't make a bit of difference because the game is already a bomb. Why put so much work into co-op (which according to Volition themselves was half of their SR games' development time) when nobody will care?
 
You can blame the marketing, but the things they showed about gameplay with a team of characters with specific active abilities and "ultra/super/special" ability really did make it seem like a current day multiplayer thing.
 
I understand it not being to everyones taste but I don't agree in the slightest with it being dated. With 12/13 different agents with different abilities and various RPG (albeit not too deep) mechanics at play I don't see what's outdated about it tbh. Unless you consider the notion of just shooting things outdated.

It's not just what the game's doing, it's how it's doing it. The UI, the feel of the movement, the structure of missions and exploration. It's like playing a late-gen 360 game (at best). It feels like the developers haven't tried to grow and evolve since Saint's Row 4.

If this game had been released a year or two after SR3 or 4 it wouldn't feel out of place at all. But now, it feels dated. There's been a lot of iteration and growth on all of the things this game is doing in the multiple genres this game is trying to take a stab at. This game doesn't reflect any of that.

I'm not saying the game is bad, but the RPG mechanics you're talking about are also part of what makes it feel dated. There's a ton of fiddly customization stuff that you access through this really nasty, complex UI. They should know how to present that stuff better by now. But they're still showing it to us in the same weird, unnecessarily complicated way that the last two Saint's Row games did. Everything's buried in menus upon menus and you can't get a good idea of what's happening to your character overall without sorting through a bunch of different sub-categories of buffs and systems. Hell, Borderlands 2 had a better UI for this kind of thing and it's UI sucked too. And that was years ago.

And that's on top of the shooter gameplay feeling like Crackdown 1. Which is a fine game. But an aged game. Attacking enemies isn't particularly satisfying looking (except as melee characters, which are pretty genuinely enjoyable), and most of the game's missions are "go to place, shoot guys. go to another place, shoot more guys" instead of having more story or structure to what you're doing. You're just killing random minions while the story happens by way of NPCs telling you things via voiceover. You effectively don't matter, the game's an audiobook with boss fights and busywork.

The sandbox/shooter genres deserve better than Agents of Mayhem.
 

Synth

Member
See that's the problem, Lawbreakers actually seems like an arena shooter with some unique ideas, while the likes of Quake C is a straight up Overwatch clone

Right, so everyone's busy jumping on your first post.. but this.. are you taking the piss?

Do you actually just look at each game from a distance for all of 3 seconds before forming a really silly opinion of it and just running with that in the future?
 

Big_Al

Unconfirmed Member
It's not just what the game's doing, it's how it's doing it. The UI, the feel of the movement, the structure of missions and exploration. It's like playing a late-gen 360 game (at best). It feels like the developers haven't tried to grow and evolve since Saint's Row 4.

If this game had been released a year or two after SR3 or 4 it wouldn't feel out of place at all. But now, it feels dated. There's been a lot of iteration and growth on all of the things this game is doing in the multiple genres this game is trying to take a stab at. This game doesn't reflect any of that.

I'm not saying the game is bad, but the RPG mechanics you're talking about are also part of what makes it feel dated. There's a ton of fiddly customization stuff that you access through this really nasty, complex UI. They should know how to present that stuff better by now. But they're still showing it to us in the same weird, unnecessarily complicated way that the last two Saint's Row games did. Everything's buried in menus upon menus and you can't get a good idea of what's happening to your character overall without sorting through a bunch of different sub-categories of buffs and systems. Hell, Borderlands 2 had a better UI for this kind of thing and it's UI sucked too. And that was years ago.

And that's on top of the shooter gameplay feeling like Crackdown 1. Which is a fine game. But an aged game. Attacking enemies isn't particularly satisfying looking (except as melee characters, which are pretty genuinely enjoyable), and most of the game's missions are "go to place, shoot guys. go to another place, shoot more guys" instead of having more story or structure to what you're doing. You're just killing random minions while the story happens by way of NPCs telling you things via voiceover. You effectively don't matter, the game's an audiobook with boss fights and busywork.

The sandbox/shooter genres deserve better than Agents of Mayhem.

Well fair enough, I still fundamentally disagree that the combat is like Crackdown or even outdated but I'm not going to persuade you otherwise (and I wouldn't try to). I can't say I ever had many problems with the UI but then again a lot of times that doesn't bother me as I don't mind digging into menus. Agreed about the structure repetitiveness though, it just never bothered me as I enjoyed playing it so much.

I'll just say that simply for me, it's one of the more fun shooters I've played in recent years despite its issues and I look forward to putting more time into it (levelling up agents etc) despite completing the story already.
 

prudislav

Member
And then when they confirmed their game didn't have any co-op multiplayer, which was one of the main draws of the Saint's Row games, I had to give it a pass.

sometimes universe it feels like universe telling me i played the game wrong :-/ To be honest never even notice they had coop until this thread
 
Would calling it saints row really change its appeal? I've never been a fan of the saints row games but this seems to play nothing like them .

Is saints row a huge seller ? I've always thought it had a poor mans gta stigma , this seems like a more acrimony saints row minus all the filth (dildos etc)

Seems like it suffers from not really knowing what it wants to be , elements of mobas , coop style gameplay without any actual coop (bizarre). Trying to make borderlands personalities with bad writing etc

Don't mean to be harsh on the game , by all accounts it's actually a fun (albeit repetitive) game , but I don't think it's worth a full price .

People know what Saints Row is. Those games did well. There was zero point in removing the name and removing coop. No idea what they were thinking with this game.
 

Darkangel

Member
Ouch. Friend from high school worked on this game. I'd see posts on Facebook from time to time. Never knew it was tied to Saints Row. Never knew it wasn't a multiplayer only shooter.

I don't know why, but I also assumed it was some kind of multiplayer shooter like Law Breakers.
 

spannicus

Member
Game looks ok. If i didnt have to work so damn much id play it. Miss the carefree days of playing games whenever i wanted to.
 
Top Bottom