Agent Hugo: Hula Holiday

Agent Hugo: Hula Holiday
Hugo will never get any vacation due to this game.
Genre(s): Platform Platform(s): Wii PlayStation 2 Microsoft Windows Release: 2008 Developer(s): Attractive Games Publisher(s): NDS Denmark Predecessor: Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist

Agent Hugo: Hula Holiday is a platform game developed by Attractive Games and published by NDS Denmark in 2008 for PlayStation 2 , Wii and Windows. It serves as the sequel to Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist and is overall the fourth/final game in the Agent Hugo spin-off franchises, as well as the final main game in the Hugo Franchise.

Plot

Agent Hugo spends his well-deserved vacation on an idyllic and peaceful tropical island in the Pacific. While he is relaxing on his air mattress and playing around with his bubble gun, it suddenly starts to stink. As things get worse and worse, he pulls out his binoculars and watches how flies and trash cans attack the beautiful island. They are under the command of the villain Big Fly. Only Agent Hugo with his bubble gun and the other cool special devices can drive away the intruders and save the island paradise.

Why It's Start to Stink

1. Unlike the other Agent Hugo games, there is not any voice acting, only gibberish, which is disappointing for an Agent Hugo game as the other ones have voice acting (even if some of them are bad), and there is also little to no gibberish, which makes the game too relaxing and not that funny compared to the other Hugo games.
2. This is supposed to be an Agent Hugo game, but it feels more like a classic Hugo game with only the Agent Hugo name placed on it, as there are not any characters that appear in the other Agent Hugo games. There is no officer base, nor are there any characters from the previous games, such as Honeybunny or R.I.S.K., which makes the game feel rather like a prequel to the first Agent Hugo game.
   • To make things worse, Hugo doesn't have his suit from the previous Agent Hugo games, which makes the game feel even more like a classic Hugo game. The same can be said for the cover art.
   • Not to mention that the famous Agent Hugo rotating logo is not there this time.
3. The soundtrack is incredibly bland and generic (even more than Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist), like most budget games out there. Much like M&M's Adventure (another showelware game), you could easily forget that the music actually plays, even though at least it fits some of the theme level.
4. The game is again a shameless rip-off of Crash Bandicoot, with the spin being extremely similar to Crash in his game except slower and underpowered. It's also even easier than Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist to see that it's a Crash Bandicoot rip-off.
   • Even the environments look similar to some Crash Bandicoot games (especially Crash Bandicoot: Warped and Crash Twinsanity), which makes the game feel even more like a rip-off of Crash Bandicoot. It's showing zero respect to the Hugo series, and it's even ruining his reputation, as he was considered by some to be one of the worst characters of all time for the same reason as Bubsy, which was Bubsy 3D, who ruined the Bubsy's reputation.
5. The controls are very unresponsive, extremely stiff, and broken at the same time as Hugo takes half a second to jump or spin, which was already a huge problem with Lemoon Twist. No matter how much you press the buttons, he will take half a second or even a second sometime.
   • In fact, when you use the bubble gun, you will either have to press X or O to go to the standard controlling mode, which is very annoying and a bit confusing.
6. All of the different transformation are awful and somehow worse than these from Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist.
   • The helicopter bubble is used only two times in the entire game, and it's very slow and boring to use it, plus you mostly must find another bubble to skip this part. To make matters worse, some will probably intentionally commit suicide by restarting the stage without it, which is not only bad but extremely annoying.
   • The shield attack, while good, is extremely overpowered and can break the rock and kill enemies very easily; again, it's also abruptly stopped when you go to some area.
   • The rollerball is the worst offender, with some of the worst controls in any Hugo game. In the later levels, it's sometimes focused on this gameplay phase, and you sometimes have to kill enemies with it, but you have to be fast for rolling on them, and it's very annoying. To make matters worse, there is a level at nearly the end of the game where you have to play with that for most of the stage, which is barely bearable.
   • The bubble gun is also a very bad weapon due to being useless (except when you face some enemy types) and just stuning enemies in a bubble.
7. With the case of most budget games, this game has a bland, uninspired, and very generic plot about the fact that when Hugo is spending his vacation in the water, it's stinking more and more, and Hugo has to stop the villani who is doing that. In fact, it's so bad that even Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist offered a better plot than this game despite being still generic.
   • To make everything worse, the ending is pretty lame too, as it's only a crappy cutscene where everyone celebrates the fact that it doesn't stink anymore, there are fireworks and nothing more. After that, it goes to the credits and back to the title screen.
8. While the graphics are fine, some of the enemy designs are boring, such as the trash can enemies, which feel like they've been from another game, or even most of them; even the villain design at the end of the cutscenes is generic.
9. The cutscenes are not as great as Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist, and they are bad at best and atrocious at worst due to only being something like Hugo playing music and the intro cutscenes, which are again too short, not to mention there is no voice acting in this game except gibberish.
10. The boss fight is a huge disappointment. First off, like Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist, there is only one boss in the entire game, which is Big Fly (which has a very generic and ugly design). The first phase is very easy due to his attack being easy to dodge, and the second phase is the worst since you're in the rollerball and you have to roll on him to beat him. The problem is that you will have trouble controlling the rollerball very well, and Big Fly is very fast and barely easy to hit, which is not helped by the awful controls, it also doesn't help that the second phase is somewhat a rip-off of the Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz boss fights since you also roll in a ball.
11. The game is so bad that it's maybe killed the Agent Hugo spin-off due to the fact that there were not any other Agent Hugo games after this one.
12. Terrible camera that has barely improved from the previous game. The camera is very annoying when you are in the rollerball phase as it will abruptly move to another direction without warning. It's also very troublesome when you must go to another platform when the camera is zoomed to Hugo, which makes the camera unbearable.
13. The drawn distance is awful; sometimes you will think that you will be on a platform, but it's in reality a pit (especially in the lava world), and you will fall into the lava or water and die.
14. The game is too easy as there is no life system, the enemies barely do any damage to you, or there are too many health items.
15. Some levels drag on for too long; some levels can take 15 to 20 minutes to beat!
16. The cover art is very lazy compared to the other games in the serie as it's just a blue background with Hugo and a ennemis on the cover.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The game graphics are an improvement over Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist, and the visuals don't look poor like they did in its predecessor and instead look vibrant, altrough not as good as games like Pac-Man World 2, Sonic Heroes, ect.
2. It can actually be considered an improvement over Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist, despite the fact that some of the things that are worse in Hula Holiday are in Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist.
3. The game can be considered so bad that it's good.
4. The environments are still a positive surprise despite being a rip-off of the one from Crash Twinsanity.
5. If the controls were better, the game could have been decent and more enjoyable.

Reception

The game receives mostly very negative reviews by web reviewers. Pixel Poursuit gives this game a 2/10, saying that the game looks okay for a PS2 game, but criticizes the fact that some of the good things of Lemoon Twist were done badly in this game and make them even worse in this game. He also says that the voice acting is bad.

Trivia

• This is the last Agent Hugo game and one of the last Hugo platformers.

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