[b]TL;DR:[/b] Agony VR is a highly stripped down version of the Agony Unrated; while it lacks fun or compelling gameplay loops, there's SO much interesting world in its Allighieri-inspired Hellscape while immersed in VR that it's impossible to not recommend at the given price point.
[b]A MORE DETAILED TAKE:[/b]
I completed this game last night after ~20 hours and judging from the overall lack of discussion and Steam reviews on this with more than ~20 minutes of total playtime I have to conclude I'm one of the only people who have done so. And for the folks that DO leave Steam reviews after doing no more than verifying the game runs and 'trying it' for 20 minutes, shame on you! This game's tormented version of Hell is filled with sinners guilty of THAT sort of mindless banality.
Agony VR is a strange game, released almost 5 full years after the original flat version came out without the VR support promised in its Kickstarter goal and released by a different studio. I played only a bit of the Unrated flat game on which this is based, so I'm not an expert on the differences between the two, but here are just a few of the things I've seen in YouTube videos of the flat version that are strangely absent from the VR version:
- An intro movie
- Dialog (of any kind) with NPC's
- Ability to trace to 'Runes' to solve puzzles
- Puzzles of any kind (except walking from A to B and occasionally burning an obstacle)
- At least one 'boss battle'
- The ability to jump and attack
- The ability to 'hide' in certain interact-able hiding spots
So what Agony VR seems to have done was take what was before a mostly walking-sim with some (from what I understand) poorly executed stealth and puzzle elements and water it down to a walking-and-burning-things-with-torches-while-expressing-anger-towards-women simulator. BUT, in VR. And while that may sound like satire, that 'BUT IN VR' part is a bigggg deal; when I pledged my Kickstarter for Agony some 6 years ago now all I really wanted was to walk through this admittedly inspired vision of Hell in immersive VR and on that front this game delivers A LOT.
So if you're still looking for more detail, I'll lay out the Good, Bad, and Ugly from my time with the game.
[b]THE GOOD:[/b]
[b]Environmental design:[/b] it's a mixed bag with some sections being more interesting than others. I found this vision of Hell (think Dante Allighieri's 'Divine Comedy' crossed with H.R. Geiger) to be mostly compelling. The game tries hard to constantly SHOCK you with depictions of pain, suffering, and sexual domination. It doesn't feel quite right to say I ENJOYED my time here, but here I AM recommending the game, so do with that what you will.
[b]Length of Journey:[/b] whether you’ll enjoy this game is an open question but you can't argue that there isn't a LOT of it on offer here; lots of branching paths too, I feel like I didn't come close to seeing everything in my first run through tallying some 20 hours.
[b]Price:[/b] The 'game' here may not be great, but to have access to explore the sheer amount of interesting Hellscape in VR at this selling price is a major plus. It's $13.99 selling price (I got it even cheaper on launch) feels like an apology and I have to recommend it at this price, and that's even coming from a guy who got burned by the Kickstarter VR pledge and feel 'owed' a copy!
[b]Graphics:[/b] WITH supersampling I found the game to look mostly good; sharp, detailed character models, mostly good high res textures. It’s very hit or miss though. Some vistas in the Hellscape looked absolutely stunning and I won’t soon forget them.
[b]Sense of Scale:[/b] VR games don't always get this right; it's a real treat when they do and I'm happy to say they nail it here. Some creatures monstrously tower over you and appropriately intimidate. Some of the structures and statues similarly do and I found myself spending time staring up at them in awe.
[b]Sound Design:[/b] It's not all roses here, as I'll touch on in the 'Bad' and 'Ugly,' but when it's on point the sound is good. Screams of agony emanate from all around you and appropriately stress you out and directional positioning is good. Without spoiling too much, the game 'broke the 4th wall' in ways I absolutely wasn't expecting and the sound design here was SO good that I twice ripped my headset off in abject terror; that's rare for me and I'm a VR horror guy. Kudos to the sound team here, wish they got to see my reaction to their traps.
[b]Secrets and Additional Endings:[/b] I don't personally have experience with this, so I'm trusting another poster on here who mentioned that this game contains a LOT of secrets (something like 7 endings). If this content hasn't been cut, that potentially gives you a lot of reasons to revisit the torment.
[b]THE BAD:[/b]
[b]Cut Content from Flat Version:[/b] I mentioned the specific content that I found missing from the flat version above. This is the most puzzling aspect of this release to me because no one seems to be talking about it and yet it fundamentally changes the depth of this title and further reduces a game that most people critiqued for being devoid of substance in even its more 'complete' flat version. It seems agonizingly (HAHAHAHA) clear to me that the studio doing the VR port got the bare bones of the game working to the point where it functioned a stripped-down walkthrough of Agony's environments and then decided to wrap and launch at a reduced price.
[b]Lack of Direction/Instruction:[/b] I can recall two parts of the game where the game prompted me with a 'controls' screen and instructed me how to do something (and incorrectly potrayed my Index controllers as Vive wnds in doing so). That wasn't NEARLY enough. While there aren't many game mechanics at work here, please just give us SOMETHING. Where is it explained how/why I can 'possess' other humans when my body 'dies'? Why can I sometimes possess other demons, sometimes not? Why can't I ever possess a 'Chort' like flatscreen players can to open access to certain secrets? Why can I 'hold my breath' when it doesn't seem to make me harder to detect and is totally unnecessary to finish the game? I actually spent HOURS trying to solve the 'Mind Maze' in the beginning of the game; the answer (which had to be explained to me by another user) was literally hanging out right in front of the locked exit to the maze. I never would've figured out how to open this locked gate and the game gives no direction on this, meanwhile HUGE portions of the maze went completely unused despite seemingly full of mechanics that probably had meaning in the flat version.
[b]Some Punishing Sections Without Checkpoints:[/b] there are a couple of areas that are easy to die frequently in and the game sends you back wayyy too far, oftentimes prior to cutscenes. I'm glad I persevered, but a couple of these sections really had me question whether I wanted to go on.
[b]THE UGLY:[/b]
[b]Graphics (without supersampling):[/b] By default the game looked low-res and blurry, like it was overreliant on TAA implementation which looked really bad on my Index. I had to bump resolution up to 180% supersampling (2696 x 2996) and set my HMD refresh to 80hz for the game to look good and run well. Also, some areas have really bad textures or look totally washed out. I suspect this game (long in development) was targeting the Rift CV1 with its OLED deep blacks and low resolution. I'll bet this game really benefits from OLED.
[b]Voice-Acting:[/b] Most of the NPC dialog and interaction has been ripped out of this, but you'll be hearing a lot from a couple of female characters who are constantly trying their best to sound both sultry and mockingly condescending. One of these in particular is REALLY bad, but Madmind doesn't seem to think so as it looks like they've doubled-down on featuring this VA in the sequel.
I hope this review helps you make up your mind if this is a journey through Hell worth taking.
