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Review
Agon Episode
3: Pirates of Madagascar
Review by Alexander Tait
February 15, 2005 |
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 The Agon series is one that caught my eye even back in the development
days. The graphics are crisp and the storyline is mysterious. It
involves exotic locations around the world and deals with puzzles
that have been handed down from one generation
to another.
For the unfamiliar, Agon is a little different. It comprises fourteen
episodes that can be downloaded from the official website of the
game. The series each contain a board game necessary to completing
the episode that can also be played online and offline outside of
the game. The board game is against a computer player a la Henry
Stauf but difficulty level can be configured to suit the player.
Gameplay is similar to Cryo games such as the Atlantis/Beyond
Atlantis or Egypt series.
Episode 3 continues from
the events of episode 2. The good news is that it involves a brief
summary of the events to date so you
need not have played the earlier episodes. For full effect, I recommend
that you do, though. The game begins with the protagonist, London
Museum Professor Samuel Hunt, rowing ashore the island nation of
Madagascar off Africa’s southeast coast. He only has limited
time to find the answers he is seeking. Do not be alarmed, however,
as there are no timed elements in this game.
 I imagine most players
will take a few moments to look at the water in this early stage
and later, a brilliant sunset. The developers
at Private Moon have exceeded the graphical achievements of the previous
two episodes. I found the beauty of this game jaw dropping. Surely,
this is one of those places that will stay in the mind of adventure
gamers as places they wish they really had visited. The water effects
are trance-inducing and the backgrounds are worth exploring for the
visceral rewards alone. Watch the birds sailing around overhead for
a few minutes and tell me you aren’t enjoying the scenery!
360-degree panning is an excellent touch.
The voice acting is uniformly
above average, but by far Professor Hunt’s voice and delivery is without par. Strangely, the voice
actor is an English actor living in Hungary. Stranger still is that
a significant number of his lines are awkward and immediately obviously
not created by a fluent English speaker. It’s a shame they
didn’t ask him to ensure the lines made sense and were grammatical
and natural sounding.
 The game has complete subtitling throughout but perfectionists will
note many discrepancies between the spoken and written dialog. Occasionally,
the text is not grammatical but there were few spelling errors. Having
seen both these types of errors in English and American games, these
are minor problems that detract from an otherwise strong production.
There are four language choices for subtitles: English Hungarian,
German, and French but only speaking English, I cannot comment on
how they compare with the English subtitles. All spoken dialog is
in English despite the subtitle language.
 The biggest strength of
the Agon series is its story. It is simple yet mysterious. There
are no real supernatural elements yet I was
intrigued from beginning to end of all three episodes released to
date. It reminds me at times of the Indiana Jones mythos without
the swashbuckling action or even a Gabriel Knight “lite”.
It could be argued that the plausibility of puzzles remaining undisturbed
for extended periods is unlikely but we obviously do have a propensity
for believing mysterious “what if” type tales. Just read
The DaVinci Code or type “conspiracy theory” in any Google
search. The puzzles themselves are logical and mostly manageable
by most experienced adventurers. I should warn you that the section
in the jungle is challenging and most players will need a walkthrough
at some stage. Another point of interest is that some of the puzzles
actually involve typing in the solution, which adds extra difficulty
to point-and-click type games. This ensures that trying every inventory
item in every place is not an adequate solution to all the puzzles.
 The quality of the documents
found in the game is excellent. It’s
not an exaggeration to say they rival the Gabriel Knight series in
veracity and believability. All documents look and read appropriately
to their age. Best of all, there is a section in the menu where files
can be examined again at a later time. No copious notes required
in this game thankfully.
I experienced no crashes
in the game at all. It installed and ran without incident. I noticed
later in the game that there were slowdowns
on my system at sunset on the beach. I wasn’t sure if this
was a game flaw or a reflection of the increased system resources
required to show the enhanced graphical effects. The game uninstalled
completely without a hitch also. Any troubles can be reported to
technical support here: support@agongame.com.
 Throughout, the interface is easy-to-use and intuitive. There are
few configurable features but it has some flexibility for more powerful
graphics cards to use anti-aliasing and choosing 16-bit or 32-bit
graphics. Saving is straightforward and one other good feature is
that the game saves on exit and the option to continue from this
saved game is available each time the game is run. Sound, voice,
and music levels can be altered individually. The game claims to
determine the best settings for your system automatically. Saying
this is, of course, akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull,
so most players will want to tweak to get the absolute best performance
and quality from the game.
The only way I feel this
game could be improved significantly would be if there was an option
to install all episodes and run them in
sequence instead of having to uninstall one episode before installing
the next. Perhaps the final product will have this option or at least
each set of three games on a disk could be set up this way. I’ll
have to get the CD-ROM and find out!
The episodes of the game
can be purchased from the developers’ website
and downloaded. It has been released with the other two episodes
on a CD-ROM called Agon: The Mysterious Codex, which is available
only within their native country at this time.
I think the developers have improved on the previous episode to
warrant an A-.
Final Grade: A-
(find out more about our
grading system)
System Requirements:
- Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
- 400 Mhz Pentium II
- 64 MB RAM
- 16 MB DirectX 8.0
- 3D Video Card (TNT2
or equal)
- DirectX® Compatible
Sound Card
- High Speed Internet
Access
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