Subject: REVIEW: Agony
From: [email-masked] (Sherman Chan)
Date: 1 Feb 1993 19:53:21 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

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. 

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