Absolute bloodbath from start to finish
LIKE VIRTUALLY everything that is scrutinised by the general public, reviewing games these past few years has become increasingly difficult, or at least more complicated. The tone taken by critics in recent times has shifted towards an approach favouring holding all video games by the same standards, instead of taking things on a more case-by-case basis. Agony, for example, is perhaps a victim of this newfound egalitarian approach.
In a different and utterly hypothetical era, Agony may have enjoyed cult status akin to a title such as DOOM. Unfortunately, video games do not exist in a vacuum and we must scrutinise each new release with respect to the greater context. As it stands, Playing Agony is like binge-watching Frankie Boyle routines. At first, the brutality shocks you into laughing, but once you get the shtick the blade begins to lose its edge. To be fair, gradual desensitization of the viewer is innate to the horror genre, but at least most successful horror titles have other mechanics to maintain their entertainment value once the shocks grow tiresome.
The remarkably macabre and detailed version of Hell portrayed in Agony is one of unspeakable horrors. Your character is depicted as a fallen soul attempting to liberate itself of the myriad abominations of the underworld. The story is rather vague and uninteresting, not at all helped by voice acting that registers a solid eight on the scale of ‘one to FarCry 2’. The gameplay itself isn’t actually the worst, but the almost endless and infinitely frustrating gameplay bugs do little to encourage reviewers to expound the virtues of a simple gameplay loop that developers should be getting right, anyway. Agony bears all of the hallmarks of a small development team – a promising premise and beginning followed by a hurried romp through reused assets and unimaginitive level design.
Finally, it should be worth mentioning Agony is an absolute bloodbath from start to finish. So much so, that at the last possible minute the developer’s were forced to release a censored version of the game in order to spare the threat of legal action. Even if you can get past the deluge of bugs and frustrations to uncover yet another game of unrealised potential – Agony is absolutely not for the young nor the squeamish.