Harry Situation Reviews: Agony

Holy hell!

Agony is the new triple-A independent horror game for the XBox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. The game features you the player as a soul sent down into the deepest depths of Hell, and your only salvation of escaping this nightmare realm is to seek out an entity known only as the Red Goddess, who may or may not be the ruler or the creator of this version of Hell.

From my understanding, this game was one of the most anticipated titles of the year. It started out as a Kickstarter title and garnered a lot of money from folks. Originally, it was slated for release back in March but got pushed to May for unknown reasons. I’ll even admit that I was looking forward to check this game out. But I sadly learned, as this title may suggest, this game was agonizing to play.

Let me talk about the big positive first, which is the most talked about thing in this game. The design of this setting is visually stunning yet disturbing at the same time. This is probably the most fucked up version of Hell I had ever seen in a video game since Dante’s Inferno. Everything in this game was made to make the player uncomfortable. From the walls that are made of meat and skin to the demons that have heads in the phallic shape of a vagina with teeth. It is gross, disturbing, and frankly pretty fucked up. Even the demon characters from my Sins of the Father stories would be puking in a corner if they saw all this. I’ll admit that it was a little enjoyable seeing how much effort was put into making this game stand out, but at the same time I was really grossed out by it all. If you’re squeamish from blood and gore, this is a game you’d definitely want to ignore.

Also, there’s a ton of nudity and sex in this game. Yeah, you’re gonna see ass, dick, boobs, and vagina all around this game. Don’t say I never warned you.

The gameplay is simple enough. You’re wandering around Hell, trying to solve different puzzles to advance to the next stage while also hiding from killer demons that will attack on site. The game does offer an interesting new mechanic. Whenever you die, you are given an opportunity to possess another damned soul nearby to give you another chance. You can also possess weak minded demons to control so you can unleash hell all over... well... Hell. You also do have a weapon in the form of a torch to use against weaker enemies, but take caution that your torch will attract the attention of the most dangerous of demons.

But that’s all the positives I have for this game. Everything else is a mess. That mechanic I mentioned in the last paragraph works only so often. While playing I came across a lot of other souls with bags over their heads, and whenever I died I could only possess them if I took their bags off. I didn’t learn that until I looked it up online. This fucking game doesn’t hold your hand, nor does it do a good job trying to explain how to play this game.

The lighting in this game is awful, like AVPR awful. I had a extremely hard time trying to see where I was going in this game even with the torch. I get the idea that this is Hell and it’s supposed to be dark, but you’d think there would be some good amount of lighting considering this is a realm made of FIRE!

And the glitches. Oh my god, the techincal glitches in this game were painful. Some of the dialogue skips, the characters badly lip their words, and there were areas where it looked so imcomplete that it took me out of the game. One big moment was when I was being attack by this giant demon, he completely misses me and acts like I’m invisible to him.

What I also disliked about this game was how repetitive it was. You’re basically doing the same shit over and over and over until you reach the ending, which should take you about six hours to complete. And you’re going to die a lot, which is another irritation I had with this game. And all these deaths were because I could see what I was being attacked by, or something stupid as falling off a rock ledge five-fucking-feet off the ground.

Agony was just a bad and disappointing game. I don’t recommend playing it because it is too graphic or disturbing, but more so on how terribly made it was. Agony is not worth your money or a damn.

Positives:

-Graphics

-Disturbing setting design

Negatives:

-Too damn dark

-Very gross

-Repetitive

-Poor instructions

-Glitches and issues galore

Final Grade: D+

So those are my thoughts on Agony. Have you played this game? What were your thoughts? Please be kind, leave a like and comment, and check out more of my gaming reviews here on Prose!

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