Agony

Agony proves that, like beauty, horror can be only skin deep. With gratuitous amounts of violence and masochistic overtones, this blood-soaked adventure is not for the faint of heart. But while its bold and detailed environments depict Hell in the most nightmarish ways possible, even the fantastically obscene sights and creepy sounds become mundane and dull by the end of its series of repetitious mazes, unimaginative item hunts, and weak stealth gameplay.

Despite some glorious and gruesome horror imagery, Agony doesn't have much else to offer.

Inconsistent enemy A.I., a bad story, and lackluster environments come together to create a grueling slog of a game

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 the best video game representation of Hell ever created, but it's the only thing the game has got going for itself. With its lack of gameplay direction, poorly explained mechanics and bad pacing, playing Agony can be a hellish experience, and not for the reasons the development team intended.

Appropriately named for all of the worst reasons...

Even amongst other slower paced first person horror walking simulators, this one stands out as especially poor.

While the great, disturbing concept of Agony surely is worth a shot, every other aspect isn’t. The graphic is old and outdated, the gameplay feels terrible, the level design is simply bad and the story really isn’t all that great.

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!

Overall the game feels like a lot of ambition but sadly lacks in follow-through.