Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist

Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist
This video game will self-destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... (BOOM!)
Protagonist(s): Hugo Genre(s): Platform Rating(s): Pegi 3 Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 2 Wii Release: PlayStation 2 EU: November 5, 2007 DE: January 29, 2008 Wii EU: May 23, 2008 DE: May 27, 2008 Developer(s): Beyond Reality Games Coyote Developments Publisher(s): NDS Denmark Country: United Kingdom Series: Agent Hugo Predecessor: Agent Hugo: RoboRumble Successor: Agent Hugo: Hula Holiday

Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist is a 2007 platform video game co-developed by Beyond Reality Games and Coyote Developments, and published by NDS Denmark for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and Wii only in Europe. It is the sequel to Agent Hugo: RoboRumble and is overall the third/penultimate installment in the Agent Hugo reboot series and part of the Hugo media franchise.

Plot

Dr. Hypno has embarked on his nefarious plan to take over the world. He has built a hypno satellite that he intends to launch into space from a fortress on a secret island, guarded by his mad hypnotized subordinates. Hugo has to face time and defeat Doctor Hypno.

Why It Sucks

1. The gameplay is pure rip-off to Traveller's Tales' Crash Bandicoot games, more specifically Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex and Crash Twinsanity, offering a similar level design, combat system, catching a fruit, and even transformations. Which leads to plagiarism and zero respect for the Hugo series.
2. The game uses the bomb texture that it too similar to M&M's The Lost Formulas' bomb texture, which was released eight years earlier than this game. The only difference is that it doesn't have the "nitro" text.
   • Even the title of the game suggests that the game will not shine with originality, which partially rips-off from Crash Twinsanity, as well as the game's theme.
3. The controls are an absolute torment. On the one hand, controlling Agent Hugo in the case of steering, when he has two transformations related to the shoes or none at all, can be bearable, but on the other hand, the helicopter and the rollerball leaves much to be desired.
   • The helicopter and rollerball move slowly, react extremely poorly to turns, which makes it difficult, for example, to avoid bombs, which are necessary to touch in some missions.
   • Returning to control as Agent Hugo in the standard way, and not only that, when a troll attacks, he cannot be controlled by you in a while. In the worst case, if this happened close to the abyss, you have a chance to fall.
4. The plot, as is often the case in budget games, is generic. It can be briefly said that the typical antagonist has a boring day, and just on a whim he wants to take over the world by means of a hypno satellite.
5. The main menu of the game is an embarrassment show that even games released on Nintendo Entertainment System offer better ones.
   • As for the number of options, it only offers "New game" and "Continue game". In the case of the PC version, it offers the "Exit" option, as usual, also like in the console versions, there are no additional options.
   • However, the appearance of the menu itself is also worth mentioning. It looks like from the times of the first PlayStation, i.e. no animations, except the rotating well-known symbol of the Agent Hugo series, and a completely devoid of creativity main menu's design.
6. Bad voice acting, especially the Spanish and English ones.
   • In Spanish, they sound like bums who live next to Carrefour in a garbage can.
   • And in English, they sound like it was being recorded by a small group of students in the basement who are more interested in watching the paint dry than doing the voice acting.
7. The graphics of this immortal game are a real relic from the past, which could even reign in its ugliness in the early 2000s. It's worth mentioning that the game looks worse than the previous Agent Hugo games, which look good for their time.
   • The textures are of skunk vomit quality. The character models look like dolls cut from the plywood curve. Natural objects are more like cheap quality board game toys. The water looks like liquid jelly and the lava is more like tomato sauce with lots of pepper. And the characters consistently express the same facial expressions, no matter what action you are doing.
8. Terrible and painfully stiff animations, just like in other games by the same developer. Particularly noteworthy are the animations of the opponents, which were not created in any way during motion capture. It looks more as if it was done by an amateur using Blender or Source Filmmaker, with a budget of five packs of crisps.
9. Unimaginable embarrassing sound effects, as in many games from the developers behind the later released game, Mr. Bean, the similar game to Lemoon Twist. Hugo's double jump sound sounds like a parachute launch. Collecting a given object, such as lemons, batteries, and launching a given transformation, resembles the average sounds of extremely inept educational games. The sounds during the menu are reminiscent of old cartoons.
10. Quite bland, generic, and uninspiring soundtrack. Most of the songs put the player to sleep, instead of strengthening and arousing emotions with atmospheric music.
11. The game is locked to 30FPS, even on Windows version. Especially since you are dealing with a platformer that reigns in an unimaginably outdated presentation, which is unacceptable. The main problem for which this is happening is that the game was fully developed for consoles and later extremely lazily ported to PC.
12. Terrible camera, easily comparable to Data Design Interactive games. The camera cannot be changed in any way, in the sense of turning the analog stick or the mouse (depending on hardware), you only have to frequently click the button that you control with the main character on the side you want to reach.
13. The transformation associated with metal shoes is too powerful which makes the game extremely easy, but also boring.
14. The boss is an absolute disappointment. Firstly, there is only one boss in the entire game, not even one of them after beating a given chapter. Second, Dr. Hypno is absolutely easy to beat. First # you appear in a maze that is filled with obstacles. Then when you exit the maze, you have a transformation with sneakers that supports speed. Finally, when the boss appears near you, you have to hit the plate that slides out from under the main antagonist's spaceship.
15. The game as it is linear, it is filled with invisible walls, which is most noticeable when launching a given mission, rather than having the back terrain obscured by mountains or other natural objects. This is also noticeable in some missions where the side terrain is slightly obscured by wood, where you can't even pass in front of it.
    • The game may not be a festival of bugs and glitches, there are times when the game has slight collision problems, where opponents can penetrate the wall, especially when you beat an opponent close to the wall, and penetrate parts of Agent Hugo's body during close contact with the wall.
16. Square and rectangular platforms are too fast. Sometimes you can fall easily, for example into acid in a factory, and an abyss in the case of jungle.

Redeeming Qualities

1. By the standards of budget platformers, the game is not short. It has a total of nineteen levels (including the boss) that you will complete even longer than ten minutes.
2. In the game, you can change the costumes, when if you catch all the lemons in one of the chapters, which is a nice thing.
3. In Agent Hugo's main base, there are four rooms that are designed to be training rooms where you practice mastering the four transformations.
4. The cutscenes, by the standards of budget games, originally designed for the PlayStation 2, look pretty good. Additionally, they can be funny, like the situation with the self-destruction of the object.
5. The level design is quite a positive surprise, despite being still a calque of Crash Twinsanity. The game offers levels with a beach, jungle, ruins, desert, snowy mountains, and a factory.

Reception

Lemoon Twist was poorly received by both critics and users alike. French website Jeuxvideo.com gave the game a 7/20, criticising the graphics, gameplay, the game lenght, story, and more. In conclusion, they said "We can only pay one compliment to Agent Hugo Lemoon Twist: It's remarkably faithful to the original TV show. This game is a UFO straight out of the days when we did not yet master the intricacies of a 3D game: the cameras show you everything except what you want to see, the jumps become incredibly complicated because it is impossible to estimate the distances... It only remains to hope that this opus of Hugo's adventures will be the last. British YouTuber Pixel Pursuit, which is known for reviewing every Hugo home console game, gave the game a 4/10, saying that Lemoon Twist is the best Hugo game, but still being underwhelming.

Reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88kmcBd-kk

https://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0000/00009535-agent-hugo-lemoon-twist-test.htm

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