You know when you get an email from PR repeating just how adult a game is that you’ll be expecting to play an ‘interesting’ game.
Agony is a first-person adventure that sees the player take charge of a Matyr, fated to Hell, who must escape the underworld by coming face-to-face with the terrifying Red Goddess.
You begging by waking in Hell, with no memory of how you ended up there, all you know is that you need to find the Red Goddess. In order to survive you’ll need to sneak around trying to possess other citizens of hell that will help increase your power.
It has the making of quite a good video game, it’s just a shame that its execution lets you down. Agony is graphic, you’ll see bodies being ripped in half in great detail, while others are impaled on giant spikes, whilst they are still alive and if that’s not enough, you’ll see corpses engaging in sexual acts with demons.
The developers, Mad Moon have clearly put some painstaking effort into the graphics and details of the environment, there is plenty of nudity, including demons with heads shaped like Vaginas, plus there are more boobs and knobs than you can shake a stick at, however after a while you will become desensitised to the graphic nature and hell begins to look a bit samey.
The narrative got tired very quickly, which isn’t helped by the naff Voice Acting, however the rest of the audio design was superb and will send shivers down your spine. Hellish scream of pain echo around you, while drops of blood will embed in your ear canals.
I was let down by the poor gameplay mechanics and unfair checkpoint system. You’ll spend most of your time sneaking around trying not to be caught by the various demons in the game, trouble is, the frustrating AI and level design sees you die far too easily. You are able to distract enemies but even that feels laboured. When you are caught and killed your spirit leaves your body and you are given a small amount of time to fly around and find another body to host you.
The trouble is if you don’t find body quickly enough you’ll end up back at your last checkpoint, but in turn they feel poorly spaced and you’ll often find yourself having to replay large chunks of a game you won’t really enjoy.
Agony seemingly wants you to be in agony just trying to work out what the hell it wants you to do, when you do finally figure out what their intent is you become hindered by a frustrating camera and terrible frame rate.
I really hate giving games a hard time, but in the case of Agony I’m feeling lees sympathetic, don’t waste your time on this one.
