Agents Biohunters has been release for public play after a few closed beta testing, but players shouldn’t expect a full release for maybe another year, the game has been released as an early access game. And believe us when we say it’s real early, Agents feel more like an alpha build than an early access game that had been said to be in beta.
In all honesty Agents Biohunters isn’t even ready for early access, there are no tutorials, no settings for players to change, no way to invite friends, no in-game chat system or even a way to exit a game if you find yourself to be the only one in the match. To say this version of the game is bare-bones would be generous, it barely functions and only raise the question, why was this released at all?
Surely, it’s because the team at Playstark thought that their game would help players cope with the worldwide epidemic by providing a new free-to-play game to pass the time, right? Well this iteration of the game will cause more frustration than joy, there is nearly nothing to enjoy right now, the game barely functions as if the team forgot to update the Steam store with the correct game.
It should be noted that the developers have released a roadmap for the game, by the end of the year Agents Biohunter will have (in the order that has been shown from Spring to Winter): the ability to play with friends and utilize a ping system, in-game chat and settings/keybinding, competitive matchmaking and daily missions, and ending with a new agent and custom buildings.
It’s surprising to see how many basic modern features is missing from the game, this a team-based hero shooter, so why is the in-game chat not being implemented first, why is it being planned for the summer update? Why isn’t keybinding already programed in? Why can’t players change any of the settings to help the game run smoother?
Sure, you can say that these things will be added later and it’s ok because the game is in early access, but isn’t the idea of early access is to give players a good indication on what the game can become? Somehow the closed betas in 2019 functioned well and felt more complete than what was released this year. The early access version feels like a watered-down alpha version of a game that wasn’t even ready a few months ago, it turned out buggier and less stable than it was back in December (which ran better and had fixed the matchmaking issue).
What’s good about the early access version of Agents? The art style is still nice, and the vibrant colors helps make the game look attractive and makes the singular map worth exploring, so the art department should be proud of their achievement. Character designs look great, even the more generic looking characters like April look cool enough to where you don’t mind unlocking new stuff for them, even if you don’t play as them.
Other than those two things, there’s nothing here to make a recommendation to play Agents Biohunters, the game is fun when all six players are in a match, but good luck trying to get more than three people in total. The matchmaking is so bad that players from both teams will just get disconnected from the start of the match and just leave their character models in the game.
On multiple occasions everybody would get disconnected after the game claimed to have found a match, and on the very games played, only three or four people would get loaded in. During my playthroughs I was able to get into a total of four matches, mind you the game released on April 7th and I finally have enough gameplay footage as of April 13th as I write this.
I never got into a game with a full team, nor did I face an enemy team with a full roster, a few times it was two against one and that was usually in my favor. Once, my teammate got disconnected and it was just me and one other enemy player, we ran around a mostly empty map trying to get the crystal to spawn so we could move on. The crystals didn’t spawn like they were supposed to, they stayed invisible until we killed a certain number of monsters. I only know this because in only the first game I got into, the UI showed where the next crystal was and the number of monsters needed in that area, after that game it never showed up again and the crystal disappeared with it.
The idea of Agents Biohunters is for two teams of three to hunt down a giant bio-monster that is locked up in a mid-sized arena, in order to unlock said arena both teams must collect three crystals, to do this a team of three must destroy a certain number of enemies within that area to activate the crystal. Once the crystal is activated a ring with show up and the game turns into King of the Hill, both teams will have the chance to get the crystal if they stand inside the ring long enough.
It would be easy to just allow your opponents to activate the ring for you and then attack, but destroying monsters can give a team an advantage, the more monsters a player kills the more experience points they get. After accumulating enough points players will level up and can make their special abilities stronger, like adding more health points to your shield or widening a stun grenade’s blast radius. This helps ensures that players are continuously moving around the map and encourages teamwork.
Once a team collects three crystals the arena will open for them, this makes fighting for each ring important, once the arena is open teams will fight against the same giant boss, Rognar. The goal against Rognar is to destroy three select pieces of his body. They look like armor but are obviously part of his entire being, the first team to destroy three pieces wins the game.
Agents Biohunters is a simple concept and feels like it wants to be EVOLVE (remember that promising game?) and a different take on MOBAs, but it’s just a concept at this point that needs so much work that it’s obvious the developers released the game in such a poor state to try and get players to fund further development.
Out of everything Agents is missing the shop isn’t one of them, the shop was even operational during the closed betas, at this time there isn’t a paid season pass but instead players can buy Agent Coins (The coins don’t have a name in-game). There are five different amounts that players can purchase with real world money, for as small as $2 USD to $40 USD, as of right now the coins are used to purchase certain cosmetics. Other items, such as character and certain cosmetic unlocks are rewarded after players collect a second (unnamed) in-game currency that is earned after each completed match, so coins are mostly just to support the game.
There are six characters in Agents Biohunters at launch, with a new agent coming in winter, unfortunately half of the characters are locked away. This leaves you with a weak selection of an already minuscule roster, and out of the three characters locked away one is locked behind the ‘season pass’, while the other two must be purchased using Agent Coins (ACs can be won in the season pass for free as well).
Agents Biohunters is a promising concept that could make for a fun game for smaller content creators to stream, it’s not going to be as popular as Paladins or even Darwin Project, but it could have a ongoing community if it doesn’t fall into obscurity with the slow looking roadmap that’s planned.