Agony

 Agony

I think it's been a long time since a game did not hurt my head. But like a headache like that, it goes back longer than I have a conscious memory. Somehow, I lived Agony. One can say it: there is indeed something of the hell in my experiment on this last one. So yes, maybe the patch day one would have fixed some problems, maybe if, maybe that ... But in the meantime, what I'm going to describe to you is my experience about three to four hours before stopping and moving on. Do you know why ? Well, you'll know it soon. Let's go.

Agony is a walking simulator. After watching some videos, I realized, but its context and aesthetics made me want to see the game and experience it myself. Because to explore hell is still the foot, right? No. But first of all, remember that the work on the visual and the artistic coherence is admirable; it's red, it's gore, it's creepy (the vagina on the apple is good), the creatures are filthy, the damned are horrible to watch, the sound effects when they work ... Let's start by saying what's going. The sound effects are very worked and punchy. There is a pretty impressive work on the coating, and on this side, apart from the disgusting textures and visual effects resembling bugs ...

No, overall, the work on it is pretty irreproachable: we're in hell. We are so in hell that I thought that when I started to run on the bones and that the sound made a sizzling sound and frankly unbearable. I thought it was a feature. Of course not, and again, it happened when I started running; it was enough not to do it after all. Not serious. We can let that go. Well, then, when I turn the camera and tearing me cut the retina and greatly diminished the overall beauty of the game, that too, I survived Risen 3 on Xbox 360, it'll be fine.

We will also go on the micro-freezes every three seconds; after all, it's already not very fluid, so it's not very noticeable ... Well, when I say every three seconds, it's not a way of talking, and they can be more pronounced in the transition an animation, but ... let's move on.

Ah NPC! He will be able to tell me something! He threatens me, it starts well ... Here, he repeats himself; it is probably an effect of his mind that gives way to the horror of the place ... He repeats again ... He says the sentences at least twice, sometimes with cuts in the middle of the sentence. It's curious what hell can do on diction. It does not have to be so bad. Well, that's more, since this woman has just said four times the first word of her sentence before continuing to say it, cut it in the middle, and never finish it. Let's go!

I get caught by a demon, he kills me, I can not get another damned. It does not matter, it's the rule of the game, and I respawn to a mirror (you have the right to three respawn by mirror, after it must be reactivated ... it's stupid but it's a Rule of the game). And there, each sound begins to be accompanied by a more brutal sound and sizzling, at regular pace. I have to lower the volume so that the experience becomes "practicable", but hey, it's okay: let's go!

Ah, crash bugs. Then there is no tutorial for the possession, but hey, since this is the only action that can be taken with the holding of a torch, and the attack with it to burn obstacles, the rest is contextual. Like all good walking simulator, what matters is the story with dialogues that bug while mis-doubled and poorly written (at least in French). But hey, let's move on.

We arrive in the first maze. Objective: to find three skulls to open a door under the threat of demon. Their unpredictable behavior, artificial intelligence bugs, and collision problems prevent them from moving properly in the environment. To die makes us start again collecting skulls, then finally, I die three times, and I return to the previous mirror. Forced to go back and forth to the place of my death, with obviously the bug of his constant framerate falls, freezes, buggy scripts, abominable shifts with additional sound bugs when running. I am really in agony, I have a headache, the camera in first person coupled with falling framerate / tearing and freezes made me nauseated. Finally, the game returns to the DASH of the Xbox One X: a crash that asks me to relaunch the title ...

But hey, let's go!

So that was my first contact with Agony. This is not a good first contact. It's even one of the worst I've had. But I did not let go of the case; the second day should be better, is not it? Well, yes, anyway. The most disabling problems did not manifest themselves a second time, which allowed me to go a little further. This second session saw some form of acceptance of the experience for me, and the exchange of good practices was simple: I forced myself to advance in this broken experience, in order to try to find more substance.

Indeed, there is more substance. In advancing in the skirted levels, we have in fact right to some real good moments of gloomy and macabre staging, with some ideas ... quite extreme. And when I say extreme, it is to the point of making me sketch a real beautiful grimace of disgust, to provoke me some reactions of rejections vis-à-vis what I was watching. In short, disgust, truth. And from this disgust results the sadistic pleasure that one derives from this experience, a macabre fascination for the demons who roam the corridors of hell, the masonage of baby, these same demonic babies that are found hanged by the cord umbilical in a certain section. Hell.

Because if the experiment is made difficult to accept in the state because of the crowd of technical problems and bugs (which are apparently inherent to the console versions), it is not less less successful on the artistic level: an absolute success . It is sticky, distressing, fascinating, exhilarating with horror, a contemplative purgatory in which the playful part often crashes, but manages to achieve some beautiful successes, on the occasion of one or two jigsaw by a terrifying threat (... the spider made of black arms in the portals room, a thought for me if you can do it).

Agony is a successful vision, achieved aesthetically, but horribly sabotaged by his technique on console. I was particularly killer in the first half of this review to make you understand how much I did violence to start to get an ounce of pleasure from this Agony. What I mean here is that with some patches, the title could probably shine its qualities, while undergoing its structural defects, but it is clear that without this technical part more than failed, I would certainly have you recommend it. Nevertheless, given the random nature of technical problems on the console (some have other concerns) I can decently advise you on PS4 and Xbox One. To see on PC.