Agony (2018)

Guys, I'm nuts... I know that about a week ago I said that I couldn't take this game anymore after 30 minutes of playing, and that it was literal agony.

Then, I couldn't stop thinking about it... so I decided to give it another chance. I have been playing it for the past couple of days. The game is still bad, but I am being more patient with it. I will write a more objective review when I'm done.

Played on the Nintendo Switch

"Let's make Hell real for gamers." That's my guess as to what the developers were thinking while making this game...

Agony is a bad game. It has so many performance issues, including lags, glitches, dying for no reason, getting stuck on invisible pebbles, not being able to see, horrible platforming, glitched cutscenes, falling from the map, and I am pretty I must have missed something else. On the other hand, the game had a good premise and potential. It was just not delivered correctly.

The story of Agony is told on bits by collecting notes and letters, and through some cutscenes while advancing in the game. In the beginning, it is kind of confusing, but it starts to make sense in the later chapters. It is comprise of 4 chapters, each one featuring a new area (although they feel pretty much the same to me). You are a soul in Hell who is looking to get your memories back, and eventually escape. In order to do this, you must seek the Red Goddess, who you do meet early in the game, but she keeps telling you to meet her somewhere else. Why? I'm already here... I did like the premise of the game, and the story in general was interesting. You can get up to 8 endings in this game. Good luck with that, because this was already a pain to just get a single one.

The gameplay is based on exploring and collecting items and body parts in order to open new paths to progress. This gets old pretty fast. Sometimes when you die, you can possess other martyrs or demons, which was cool but hard to complete the possession. There is no combat, since you are defenseless in Hell. After beating the game, you can actually play it again as a Succubus, and then you can fight. I wish I had this from the very beginning... One thing that I really liked was some kind of walkway where you just ignored gravity and could walk on walls and stuff like that. That was cool.

The execution of the game was very poor, almost unplayable on the Switch. The game crashed plenty of times. The worst was getting stuck everywhere, I had to be jumping over all those invisible pebbles, which made it even worse when you were running away from demons. The game is so dark, that I had to put the gamma all the way up, making it look foggy during the whole playthrough. Some cutscenes did not show whoever was talking, or there was no sound in it. I had to watch the final scene online because it was glitched on my playthrough... And the platforming is horrible. Just horrible. It almost made me rage quit the game when there was only like 3 minutes left to end it.

If you still want to give this game a shot, I would recommend playing on PC, because it looks and performs way better than on consoles. A sad...wasted concept. I would love to see other developers try something like this, but well done. And don't say Scorn, because it is not the same.

Old review

Played on the Switch.

This is literal hell for gamers. I played for about 30 minutes and couldn't keep going. It is very rare for me to do this, but it was just painful to play.

At least on the Switch, the game looks terrible. I couldn't tell where doors were, the path, obstacles... items and notes. It was all a blur. The game was lagging all the time. Very slow loading when moving to another section of the game and when you die.

The mechanics were confusing. I had to try several times in order to make then work. I stopped playing when I got to a maze part. I died for no reason and the game spawned me at the very beginning of the maze. I HATE mazes, and I was already having a nightmare playing this.

I just stopped playing and deleted the game. Bye, Agony.

Odd game. Chances are if you saw this it piqued your curiosity but you might have had some doubt. The game pretty much lets you know in the first 10 mins what it will be like. :)

Agony is not really a stealth game, FPS, walking sim, or adventure game. It borrows elements from all of these and it feels quite a bit like many late 90's shooters, platformers and other creative 'quirky' games that had a heavy value on interesting worlds made possible by technical means available at the time. (Think Unreal, Alice, Half-Life) Agony indeed feels like that kind of inspired game, which is kind of a pleasure when that route is seldom taken, however the game itself is overall average at very best, offering an interesting setting but mediocre game play (if one overlooks the oversights, and there are many). The game play is alright, sometimes cool. It's a simplified mashup of Messiah and Thief, and actually quite laid back despite it's diabolic tone. Combat is minimal (you can pick up torches, sometimes using them as improvised weapons and use the offenses of the occasional creature you might posses) and puzzle solving is not a major focus of this game. Sneaking is present but it is also not the focus either. As you progress you can level up and put points into abilities that improve your hitpoints, you stealth ability, and stamina, But umm, whatever. This is practically unnecessary and complete filler. :D

Imagine if stanley Parable was stripped of humor and thrown into a strange environment (like Xen from Half-Life) and shown the ropes by Garret the Thief all the while going off the script Clive Barker drafted up for them. Maybe Agony is a bit like that.

Agony is a weird game. It goes hard on concept. Soft on design. Agony also features some other game play modes, which I haven't bothered investigated. They include a competitive time trial mode (supposedly random maps) and a special unlock mode where you play as a more powerful succubus. much like the new Doom game, the replay value would not seem to be too present here. I was curious about the different endings, but unsure if it's worth another foray back into hell for. The sweet spot of this game is probably the cinematics. They have a modern ID feel and are the most satisfying aspect of this game.

Agony is not a bad game. But it's certainly not a good one either. It does however have a kind of taste and breaks from molds that most gamers would not appreciate or approve of. Still, to it's demise it lacks some polish and is at times cryptic on how to advance or where to go. It has bugs in scripting and various oversights. Some aspects of the game feel simultaneously inspired and 'aged' (example the sigil mechanic, the possess mechanic) The world is interesting and cool to look at, but its also a world that really keeps you on your toes and keep moving (demons patrol and haunt, and everything is dangerous) Even the best bits of this game are at times at odds with itself.

This kills my computer's frame-rate, won't be able to play it properly until I get better hardware. Based on what I can experience through looking at playthroughs here are my thoughts.

The environment and atmosphere is amazing a real 5/5. However, it looks like all it has is this one environment and even the coolest environment in the world is going to get stale, leaving you wanting to see more (of which the game has nothing to provide). What's more, it seems there isn't much to distract from the environment once it gets stale: from what I have seen the exploration looks very basic with small linear corridors and the puzzles and stealth or not very challenging or in-depth either. The NPC interaction is probably also very minimal. Again nothing to detract from the environments once they get stale nor new environments to look forward to. If the game isn't extremely short (which it probably is) I could see myself turning it off before finishing but none the less enjoying it and giving it a 3/5.

Wow, ok.. I don't think I've ever been so impressed by a trailer. This game is exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for. I remember when I was complaining about Doom (on the Grouvee forum I think). I was saying how I was disappointed by their depiction of "hell" or "the underworld." Their art direction was kind of juvenile, like a comic book rendition of hell, very cartoony and.. it looks more like the "hell" you'd see in a Saturday morning cartoon or a Disneyland ghost train. Which is disappointing, because I feel like there's a lot of material that no developer has ever explored, except perhaps a few old obscure point-n-click games like Darkseed and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

This looks really hopeful. I've always wanted to play a game with an art style/atmosphere like this, like something from a James Gleeson or Zdzisław Beksiński painting. Or Hieronymus Bosch. Maybe the trailer makes it look cooler than it actually is, but I'm still excited about it. It looks similar to the upcoming game 'Scorn' but with much higher production values.