Agony

Agony is a true journey through hell from the narrative standpoint as from the gamer's standpoint. If the hellish vibe is very good, the game is a mess in almost every other respect, from its limited gameplay to its truckload of bugs.

A depiction of hell that hasn't really been fully realised before, Agony is marred by frustrating stealth sections and some poorly explained mechanics. The horrifying imagery is generally effective and the overall presentation manages to survive some glaring technical issues, but this is very much an acquired taste in every sense of the word.

Agony is a mediocre survival horror: the dull gameplay and many controversial game design choices are the two elements responsible for this unexpected result.

Agony represents everything that a horror videogame should never become.

I can't for the life of me understand why the developers, who put such an earnest effort into recreating a true vision of the Judeo-Christian hell, would let some arbitrary need for gameplay let their work down.

Bellow its subversive appearance, Agony is just a mediocre title. It fails to capture the very essence of a successful survival horror game: an experience that combines a terrifying setting and interesting gameplay mechanics.

But the point is another: in its worst form, that console, Agony is not Agony. It is a shapeless monster from which you should look away.

Agony is, true to its name and intentions, a hellish experience. My excitement for the game was quickly quashed behind bugs, crashes and unbalanced gameplay, failing to live up to the potential of the game’s core ideas and outstanding visual design. I hope that I can travel back to Hell following some substantial patching but, as things stand, Agony is torture in all the wrong ways.

Agony is probably just like hell itself. As you progress further into it, the experience becomes worse.

Frustrating stealth sections, uninspired puzzling, and dull action make Agony gaming hell. [Aug 2018, p.73]

Madmind Studios has successfully created the definitive version of videogame Hell: humdrum, uninspiring gameplay, frustrating level design, stuttering frame-rates, soft locks and crashes galore, unpolished textures, ugly character modelling, sudden inexplicable deaths, and irritating glitches. It is a painful experience from beginning to end, with the only real highlight being the uninstall. An absolute stinker; Agony is most definitely Hell!

Agony clearly deserves its name. The gameplay mechanics are chaotic, at best, the AI is plain dumb, the level-design is muddled, the scenario is boring… Well, there’s nothing to save here.

Agony is not a good game. It feels as if the developers just gave up after such a long development cycle. Filled with bugs, boring and infuriating stealth and chase sequences and repetitive puzzles it's very hard to find anything to enjoy in Agony.

Hell itself comes to video games, in the form of disturbingly explicit imagery and unbearably dull gameplay.

Agony is hell - literally and figuratively. A potentially great concept brought down by a terrible technical performance and lacklustre gameplay, more likely to frustrate than scare you.