Developer: Chaos Industries
Publisher: KISS ltd
Platforms: PC, Mac, iOS, Android
Tested on: PC
Agent Awesome – Review
Have you ever been sacked by a huge, rich company and you feel a great desire to kill every single employee there? Well, Agent Awesome is your chance to do just that! Although that sounds like a lot of fun, the game disappoints on several keys aspects. Read the review below to find out if it’s time to transform into Agent Awesome and deliver some deadly blows.
Story
There’s not much to say about the story in the game as you could easily play it without any background information worth knowing. Basically, a drinking buddy of our Agent dares the guy into doing a bunch of silly stuff. Eventually, Agent Awesome accepts the assignment to kill all of his former employees at a company named E.V.I.L. And so you begin your murderous rampage in the office halls and kill everyone in your path.
Graphics
Agent Awesome is not a game which can ladle out about how fine it’s looking thanks to superb graphics and a neat art style. The game is rather rough around the edges and world objects don’t look all that good. The menus are pretty simplistic looking which isn’t necessary a bad thing but consequentially, depth is not something you’ll find in planning your killing spree on the map. On one hand, this makes for a great title to play when you don’t want a lot of statistics and information bars floating around the screen, however, it all might come over a bit cheap and unpolished.
Ingame, the levels often miss some creativity as objects are placed multiple times in a room to fill up some of the free space. It must be said, the levels look quite cheerful thanks to the broad range of colours used, but except for different themes, the rooms look too much alike. Count hereby pixely character and world models and Agent Awesome proves to be nothing really impressive on a graphical level.
Sound
The game offers some simple music to play in the background and that’s actually not a bad thing. Agent Awesome is a title in which you sometimes have to think quickly and having a robust soundtrack keeping you from concentration is not really the most practical way of completing a level. Still, the tunes are a bit in line with the graphics of the game, meaning that they are not something to get overly excited about.
Concerning sound effects, Agent Awesome ranges from a bad to alright level as things like gunfire and the wailing of dying opponents could’ve used a lot more oomph. Guns especially sound pretty weak and flat which makes you wonder if any damage could be dealt by such a toy weapon.
There’s no voice acting in the game except for the cutscene in the very beginning. Although having mute characters throughout most of the game is kind of annoying, the scenes that are spoken in are quite enjoyable. You can clearly see how the developers tried to make Agent Awesome as funny as possible and they certainly succeeded on that part, partly thanks to the great cutscene in the beginning.
Gameplay
Gameplay wise, Agent Awesome is a rather short turn-based strategy game with simple controls and a clear goal: kill the ‘boss’ at the end of each level. That might sound straightforward and all, but the game throws a bunch of obstacles in your way so you’ll have to be careful about planning the assassination. First of all, there’s a mini-map in which you must guide the Agent towards his objectives and/or targets. Tagging a blue dot will make him follow that specific route whilst linking a weapon to a patrolling guard will end up in the Agent killing the latter (if the timing is correct).
The first few levels are very easy compared to what awaits you later on in the game. New kinds of enemies like dogs and koalas (and I’m not kidding) will make your life a lot harder and the routes you have to follow only seem to grow bigger. As there’s a time limit to keep in mind in each level, quick thinking and a bit of strategic planning will get you a long way. Alas, the switching between the mini-map to select a route and the actual gameplay isn’t really the most practical thing to do. You’ll find yourself continuously switching back and forth to those two screens and as you can imagine, that doesn’t make the gameplay very smooth. Agent Awesome was originally a mobile game and although it might’ve played great on that platform, the PC version just falls short in terms of user friendly controls.
The turn-based aspect is situated in the combat mechanics. As said before, linking a weapon to an opponent in the map mode will result in Agent Awesome attacking the target. However, choose wisely when and how you attack an enemy as they too get their turn to gets some bars of your health meter. Attacking them in the back is usually one of the best ways to approach guards while you best stay clear of dogs as there are rather fast and really like to take home a chunk of meat.
Without encountering any game breaking bugs or glitches, the game didn’t always feel as stable. Sometimes the mini-map mode wasn’t fully cooperating which sometimes resulted in a dead awesome agent. In combat mode too, some attacking moves were a bit off (like when the Agent kills someone who’s still quite far away) but overall, there wasn’t really anything that ruined the fun in terms of technical hiccups.
A major downside is that the game only counts 12 levels which is really not a great amount as each level doesn’t take very long to complete. Sure, you can try to reach the maximum points for every playthrough, but that will keep you entertained for just a little while longer.
Conclusion
Agent Awesome might be easy to learn and funny to play, the game stills falls short on various aspects. The story is almost non-existent, the graphics aren’t all that great and the sound effects make the guns look like a total joke. The strategic layer provided by the turn-based combat is a nice touch and really let you think about possible outcomes when playing a level but with only 12 levels to play, you’ll run through the game in no time. Count hereby the less than ideal controls on PC and the unstable feeling of the game and you know that Agent Awesome might be fun for a little while but nothing more than that.
Agent Awesome - Review,
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