Path: menudo.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: sherman@Panix.com (Sherman Chan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Agony Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 1 Feb 1993 19:53:21 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 131 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <1kjv3hINNsbg@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: sherman@Panix.com (Sherman Chan) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, shoot-em-up, arcade, commercial PRODUCT NAME Agony DESCRIPTION A right-to-left scrolling shoot-em-up game. PUBLISHER UK: Psygnosis Ltd. South Harrington Building Sefton Street Liverpool L3 4BQ UK TEL - (051) 709 5755 USA: Psygnosis 29 Saint Mary's Court Brookline, MA 02146 USA TEL - (617)-731-3553 LIST PRICE $49.95 (US). I paid $12 at a software store clearing out its Amiga titles. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 512K Amiga, one disk drive. No mention is made of compatibility with any specific model of Amiga, processor, or Kickstart version. The box notes this is the NTSC release. TEST HARDWARE Amiga 500 w/68000 7Mhz CPU 512K Chip RAM - NTSC only 512k Slow RAM 2 Megs of Fast RAM Kickstart 1.2 A1010 External floppy drive Kraft one-button joystick COPY PROTECTION Disk based. The game does not appear to be HD installable, and requires a reboot to start, and exit. The recoverable RAM-disk I use (VD0:) does not survive the reboot to exit the game. REVIEW Agony is the second game I got around to playing after picking up three games from a local software shop clearing out its Amiga section (Barbarian II and Thexder are the other two). It and Barbarian II are the first two Psygnosis games I bought, because Psygnosis games are generally expensive, and have a reputation for being impossibly difficult. Agony and Barbarian II don't deserve that typecast, as both are very playable, though I don't know if they're exceptions. Agony doesn't cover any new ground. It's a side scrolling shooter, and nothing more. Usually in such games, the player controls a spaceship, a robot, or a human, but Agony casts the player as an owl. The forward firing weapon is an "attack spell" rather than a laser, gun or missile, but it's a mere cosmetic change from the norm. All the expected elements are present: various enemies with differing attack modes, objects that can be picked up to enhance your attacks, and a large powerful enemy at the end of a level. In the effects department, Agony has some real treats. The player's owl flaps its wings as it flies, and the motion is realistic. I don't know how many frames per second have to be drawn to achieve the effect, but there must be a large number. The multi-layered, scrolling backgrounds are detailed and interesting. In the first level, the player is flying through a storm, with some nice background animation in the falling rains and churning waves. The enemies are nicely detailed with bits of shading. Some of them on later levels do have large solid color patches that match the backgrounds, making them hard to see. The death sequence is a gem: instead of a poof, the owl decays, breaking into bones and feathers that blow away. Surprisingly there's no slowdown when there are a barrage of enemies onscreen; but occasionally an enemy, or missile fire by one, does blink out momentarily. Hardware sprites at work here? Probably. The music is good; it's sufficiently frantic, but not annoying. So far I've made it to level three, and there's been a different music track each time. The music for the title screen is also nice, though it would be more appropriate for a medieval-theme adventure game. Once the novelty of the audio-visual effects wears off, the game becomes little more than an easy side-scroller. I haven't finished the game yet (I count about two hours of play so far), but I can get near the end of level three consistently. The manual states there are six levels. If the game has more than six levels, I wouldn't have a concern about longevity. My progress in so little time (and making the high scorers list in my second game) doesn't soothe this concern. An autofire joystick (something I don't own) might bring a player faster progress than mine. Psygnosis's reputation for incredibly difficult games isn't holding up in my corner. I haven't had a chance to play Shadow of the Beast though. Agony comes on three disks, and the program does detect an external drive if you put a data disk in it. It writes the high scores onto disk two, which may be a problem if power is lost during the write. The box is the size of a small supermarket pie box, probably to accommodate the Roger Dean painting on its face (Roger Dean achieved fame by painting most of the Anderson/Howe/Wakeman YES album covers during the 1970s). The painting is a bit of a disappointment; having seen his YES and ASIA album covers, I can say this one isn't up to snuff. CONCLUSION As a budget purchase, pick up Agony if you enjoy side-scrollers. If you're a gamer with better skills than mine (that's not unlikely... I honed my reflexes on Asteroids, Donkey Kong, and PacMan, and I can't keep up with Street Fighter II), you may find yourself unexpectedly at the end of the game. Unless you must have every game with nice effects, or every Roger Dean painting, don't pay more than $15 for this game. --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu