Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh

aka: Phantasmagoria 2, Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh, Phantasmagoria : Obsessions fatales, Phantasmagoria: Labor des Grauens, Phantasmagoria: Um Enigma de Sangue
Moby ID: 1216
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$5.99 new on Steam
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Description official descriptions

Curtis Craig is a thirty-year-old man whose distorted childhood is filled with horrors. His father was involved in an illegal, top-secret experiment for a company called WynTech Industries. Nearly nothing is known about the true nature of this experiment; but something in it affected the sanity of Curtis' mother, eventually driving her to suicide. Curtis' father was later shot, leaving the poor little boy with serious behavioural disturbances, and eventually in therapy.

Now, a year after having been released from the mental institution, Curtis is employed at WynTech Industries, whose manager, Paul Warner, has seemingly taken it upon himself to take care of Curtis. He tries to find the cause of his psychotic episodes and the mysterious murders that break out all around him, all the while discovering more and more about his past life and his father's fate.

Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh is not an actual sequel to the original Phantasmagoria, but rather a follow-up that has similar themes and visual concept. The game is more heavy on puzzles and traditional adventure gameplay than its predecessor. The gameplay involves standard activities found in adventure games, including extended conversations with the characters featuring selectable dialogue topics, collecting and manipulating inventory items with the environment, etc. It is possible (and often necessary) to call characters on the phone, as well as check and answer e-mails accessed by Curtis' computer at his workplace.

Like its predecessor, the game has a simple point-and-click interface and employs video sequences with live actors as cutscenes. Short movies are usually shown after each action performed by the protagonist.

Spellings

  • 幽魂 2 - Taiwanese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

164 People (105 developers, 59 thanks) · View all

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 65% (based on 27 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 78 ratings with 10 reviews)

A surprisingly good game!

The Good
While the original Phantasmagoria was a horrible game, its somewhat dubiously titled "seqeul", A Puzzle of Flesh, is a surprisingly good game:

  • The acting in Phantasmagoria II is surprisingly good - far better than that of the original Phantasmagoria and better than The 7th Guest without a doubt, although the actors occasionally tend to overact and spoil the overall atmosphere of the game.
  • A surprisingly good plot; while it is not the most original story, I still appreciate Sierra for managing to come up with several original ideas. The plot is either way implemented with excellence, and the game has amongst the most enveloping atmospheres experienced in a computer game to date. Regardless of gameplay, the atmosphere is so heavy that I find it comparable to that of the amazing Amiga game Alien Breed.
  • Good video sequences and reasonable degree of CGI. The videos are professionally directed and are actually of very high quality.
  • Great background music and sound -- 'nuff said.
  • Some plot elements add more to the game than can be possibly imagined - especially the computer workstation and without a doubt the coolest element is the changing file and directory names, which become more obvious as the game progresses.

In short, Phantasmagoria II is a really great game, but not without its flaws:

The Bad
Three points really annoyed me about Phantasmagoria II:

  • The plot takes a turn for the cheezy at some point. While you can hardly expect a masterpiece of a plot from a computer game, still I would have expected Sierra to come up with a better plot element than "a portal to Dimension-X"... however, I must stress that up until the fifth CD, the game is surprisingly good and deep.
  • The video engine could've been much better - with the programming genius of The 11th Hour only a couple of years earlier I would have expected Sierra to upgrade their engine properly. The window cannot be scaled - only maximized so that the background doesn't annoy you, and the 8 bit engine (which I was at one time forced to use) is terribly slow and hideously ugly.
  • A really terrible ending. No excuses, Sierra did a really crappy job with this one.



The Bottom Line
A great game which has nothing to do with its so-called prequel. Too bad that due to the fact that it's an adventure game, it has almost null replay value.

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

Where Insanity Becomes Normality

The Good
Well, I haven't played "Phantasmagoria" first part much, but I know that this is one of the games that may look unatractive or unwilling to try, but its bait is more than juicy once you're hooked. Painful experience, but regarding nevertheless. Let's start up with a few facts about the story...

You're playing Curtis Craig, just an ordinary kind of guy who has a job, girlfriend, nice cousy appartment, and a rat. Now, the game starts one year after you've been released from mental institution. You don't remember what actually happened while you were there, or even before that, not as much, but you'll winning your memories back as you'll play throughout the game even more than you'll wish to. Seems like strange things are happening around you, and you seem to be the only one able to see them... and stay alive afterwards. But border between sanity starts to become blur to the point that you question youreself for those horrible deeds. But once murders start to happen, you begin to question a company you work for, and start searching for clues. That's where everything falls on your back.

I'm really a sucker to stories and games that own certain point of confrontation of 'good and evil' within youreself, within your main character, so that's probably the point that attracted me the most... beside the sex scenes, of course, hehehe, just kidding, but they were nicely done nevertheless ;))

I remember playing this game back when it first came out, but I guess I was too young to be able to enjoy something so horrifying, and besides, my thought back then were too different, as I only played shooters or racing games, not anymore, though :) So, when I saw this game, just a few days ago in a local store, I had to take it, plus, it was the last box on the shelves ;))

First thing I spotted was acting. Okay, I know that many reviews, magazines and sited were spittin' upon this game bigtime, but acting in this game was really on a professonal level, or so I've got the impression. Dialogues are interesting, story unfolds very quickly, you can easily notice who are your friend and who aren't, and who wants more than just being a friend. Plus, I checked and noticed that the gal who plays your girlfriend played in quite a few erotic movies, some of them Playboy's, so that's why scenes with her are so well done, hihihi :)

Beside acting and the story, which both suited me very well, only thing I spotted was the music because only by listening to it you could pre-define when will something happen, anyway. A very big plus is that this is 3rd-person point-and-click adventure, my favorite genre ever, so go figure why I liked this game so much. That, and I've learned that people who review games on magazines or such sites, and renowned critics are all a bunch of morons who doesn't care about anything, which is one of the reasons why I never seek an opinion to buy a game in such sources, but rather check MobyGames and some personal opinions from the players. I mean, who can help you the best but a fella player, right?

Oh, one more thing, the graphic. The graphic looked so old and so screwed, I mean, "The Beast Within" was from 1995, and this game is from 1996, so how could they make so crappy quality in newer game? On the other side, I started to like it very soon after I played the game, 'cos it kinda gave me the atmosphere of that year, a certain spark of oldness in a good sense of way. Hey, maybe I was doomed to play in such quality 'cos I only managed to install the game under DOS. But when I finally managed to install it under Windows 98, whow, then it was perfect, hehe, and Sierra is known to make games that do not use DirectX, but are rather windowed in Windowses ;)) That's cool, 'cos you can be on the Internet same time, or writing some text in Word, hehe, I mean, it doesn't focus you solely on the game unless you want it, though :)

Also, this game is really easy, with no hard puzzles at all. Seems like everything's unveiling by itself, though there are some parts that may be tough to guess (some computer codes) due to thing that you must remember some word from way before the point where you'll have to actually use it. But otherwise, this is one easy adventure, more text, less puzzles, and that's simply great!

The Bad
Well, I hate horrors and anything related to such stuff, but in my humble opinion, and good driven story can make a horror game or a movie sink aside, presenting us what we really want - a good compelling story. Though, the atmosphere was intense, but still, they shouldn't use such gruesome elements in such quantity, though, now that I remember, I played it password protected in fully uncensored mode, hehehe.

The Bottom Line
I haven't played such an extraordinary game for months. Beside the fact that I rally enjoy playing adventures with live cast and blue-screen technology, this game without a doubt provides you with fine acting, intriguing story, high levle of atmosphere, tingling music and way too easy interface. But the fact is, it's still somehow more movie than a game itself, so if you, like me, enjoy to watch bunch of FMV scenes and dialogues between characters, you should at least try it, 'cos beneath the horrifying story is hidden another one that will unravel it all.

In general, what this game has to offer is:

  • very fine acting
  • nice backgroundish music
  • some really gruesome scenes, which you may be able to skip by playing at 'low' level
  • intense atmosphere with unexpected events
  • somewhat low quality FMV, comparing to "TBW" which is even older game
  • very easy way of playing which will make you think you're selecting movie chapters rather than playing
  • short endings, but that's why there are two of them, anyway And for final to say, this game sure had some points that caught me unready, but that's why it's rated 'mature', isn't it? ;)) So, be prepared to be frightened a bit more than in ordinary adventure games. The risk is all yours... but I think it was worth it.
  • DOS · by MAT (240759) · 2012

    When office romances take a ride on the wild side

    The Good
    As a common practice, when game companies like Sierra and LucasArts create sequels to their popular titles, those titles would feature the same protagonist from the previous games. You would think the same rule applies when Sierra developed a sequel to Phantasmagoria. Nope. A Puzzle of Flesh was spearheaded by Lorelei Shannon, who also was in charge of Pepper’s Adventures in Time and helped co-wrote King’s Quest VII with Roberta Williams. In addition, the protagonist is male; and the making of this game involved filming on location near the company’s headquarters, and not actors being plonked in front of a blue screen, along with some props. However, A Puzzle of Flesh shares one thing in common with its predecessor – its themes.

    After spending some time in a mental institution, 26-year-old Curtis Craig returns to work where he gets to associate with his interesting co-workers. While working at WynTech, he has hallucinations, flashes of gore, or receives odd e-mails. His co-workers are found brutally murdered, and he finds out this may be connected to the “Threshold” project, a top-secret project that his father was also involved in. During the game’s five chapters, you will do some other interesting things like going to daily sessions with a therapist, discussing life growing up, work, and the Threshold; snoop through your superior’s office; deal with an aggressive cop; and experience the joys of S&M.

    Curtis's co-workers are likeable, and I was sad to see what happened to them. I could tell that Trevor was gay through his behavior, dialogue, and fondness of Curtis. Jocilyn has an on-again-off-again relationship with Curtis, and this ends on a sour note as soon as she finds out that he is cheating on her. Bob is a classic example of the one guy at work that gets on your nerves, but what happens to him afterwards you don't wish that on your enemies. Therese is your wild co-worker who doesn't care if Curtis is taken, and she is prepared to let him share her fetishes. The actors who portrayed their characters did an amazing job, and I could see that the actor who played Therese enjoyed herself filming her scenes.

    The game utilizes Sierra’s Creative Interpreter version 3, the final revision of Sierra’s SCI engine before they got into trouble later, and people who have already played KQ7 and Phantasmagoria should be familiar with it. The game is presented in a letterbox format, and you have the one cursor which can be used to interact with objects and move to different areas. Dragging the mouse to the bottom of the screen allows you to access the inventory, and the icon next to your items allows you to examine one of them. In A Puzzle of Flesh, the interface also allows you to review video clips spread over the individual chapters, access the “all-in-one” control panel, and the map (which is useful if you don’t feel like walking all the way to the exit).

    In A Puzzle of Flesh, there are a lot of minor video clips of Curtis doing something that range from opening and closing drawers, walking from room to room, opening and closing doors, and sitting down to work. The major ones are reserved in the beginning, middle, and end of each chapter. The clips are stored as DuckMotion (DUK) files, which can be played in VLC media player. (I’m not kidding. Go try it!). Since the clips feature 16-bit colors, but the SCI engine only had 8-bit colors, Sierra programmed the game to have the engine shut down every time the player triggers a clip. This is why you don’t see the interface when a clip is played.

    A Puzzle of Flesh is right up there with the first game when it comes to violence. Four chapters in the game ends with a gruesome murder taking place, and there are occasional flashes of gore present in some movie clips. There are quite a few sex scenes added as well, with the first in chapter one. In addition, one of the characters you meet near the final stages of the game – the Hecatomb – is enough to give anyone nightmares. All of this is why some countries have a problem with games that are controversial. The Australian version of the game had the censored mode permanently turned on.

    Wes Plate was responsible for the editing, which was done on a Macintosh Quadra 950. This is because the program Sierra wanted him to use was only available on a Mac. It is ironic, then, that the final game did not see a release on the machine. I find it amusing that there are slight pauses at the end, but I don’t know whether this has anything to do with the engine starting back up. I feel a bit sorry for Plate, having to make special cuts for countries that believed in game censorship.

    The music in A Puzzle of Flesh is brilliant, and Gary Spinrad did a wonderful job making sure that it blends well with the game’s theme. The early clips, showing Curtis’s hallucinations, have that beat to them, while the music when Curtis is making love to his girlfriend has an easy-listening feel to it. Other pieces I like include the creepy music you hear as you walk around WynTech, as well as those near the end of the game. Spinrad also did the vocals for the ending theme music, which happens to be just as bad as the one in the first game!

    The Bad
    I found some of the controversial scenes uncomfortable. There is one scene in which Curtis and Therese are having passionate sex in the Borderline’s bathroom after Curtis volunteers to have his navel pierced. I thought that this was a bit extreme. As for the murders, I didn’t have a problem with most of them, but Bob’s murder was too much.

    I have to agree with some reviewers that some of the puzzles are illogical. Within the first five minutes into the game, you have to retrieve your wallet from underneath the couch, and you would think to move the couch to get it, right? Wrong. You must involve your pet rat, Blob. Another one is at the end of the game. You are offered no clues as to how to solve it, and it is a matter of clicking everywhere until something happens.

    It would have been useful if you could easily play the FMV clips that are not located on the CD that is in the drive, and that a CD request screen appears. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to do anything and all I ended up getting was a “Blue Screen of Death”.

    The Bottom Line
    A Puzzle of Flesh is a horror game in the same vein as its predecessor, and explores themes that were considered taboo at the time of its release. It is not for the faint-hearted and certainly not one for kids; it has its fair share of violence and sex. This led to some countries either banning or censoring it. It is an interesting game and definitely worth a playthrough.

    Windows · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2019

    [ View all 10 player reviews ]

    Trivia

    Australian version

    The Australian version of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh suffered the same fate as Duke Nukem 3D: The censorship feature is turned on permanently.

    German index

    On March 31, 1998, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

    German version

    In the German version, one video with Therese at the water tank is missing. The game shows the scene in which Curtis drinks water twice instead. There is also a slight difference during another scene in Therese's cubicle.

    Phantasmagoria

    The only connection between Phantasmagoria and this game is that at the beginning of Act 3, Curtis receives a letter about a book signing by Adrienne Delaney, the main character in Phantasmagoria. It is impossible to meet Adrienne, however.

    UK version

    In the UK version, the videos of Bob's and Therese's deaths are based on the "low violence" game setting by default. They are also some additional cuts during the scenes.

    Video

    The Windows version of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh displays 16-bit videos, while the DOS-edition can show only 256-colors.

    Sexual content

    If you are able to play an uncensored edition of the game, be prepared for a fair share of sexual content, which, at least at the time, was pretty taboo for the gaming industry:

    Curtis has sex with both of his female coworkers, one of which is into S&M and invites Curtis to a S&M techno-nightclub. In therapy, Curtis confronts his gender identity issues, his mother forcing him to wear a dress, and his romantic feelings for his gay best friend.

    Information also contributed by Ajan, B14ck W01f, Virgil and Xoleras

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    Contributors to this Entry

    Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.

    DOS added by MAT.

    Additional contributors: Tomer Gabel, MAT, Jeanne, chirinea, Daniel Albu, Sciere, Xoleras, Paulus18950, ETJB, Patrick Bregger, Maner76, Shamal Jifan.

    Game added March 28, 2000. Last modified January 23, 2024.