Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria

The Good
When CDs started flooding the market in the first few years of the 1990's, many people thought the future of video games lied in interactive movies. The veteran adventure game designer Sierra became affected by this craze for a short while, and presented its own take on the new fashion: Phantasmagoria, a seven-disc extravagant monstrosity complete with live footage, digitized graphics, and stylized medieval-sounding choirs.

If getting scared is the only thing you look for in a horror game, then Phantasmagoria might not be as disappointing as it turned out to be for those who expected good adventure gameplay. Roberta Williams apparently had enough of innocent fairy tale storytelling in her King's Quest series and unleashed what must have been the darkest images concocted by her imagination onto this title. The game contains some of the most disturbing, unsettling scenes in the history of the medium - but that's not what makes it horrifying. Rather, it is the perpetual building of suspense, the long stretches of wandering preceding the brutality, during which not much is happening, but many things are foreshadowed, resulting in a convincingly ominous atmosphere.

All this is further enhanced by technology. The superbly detailed graphics are all digitized images, looking strikingly real and immersing you into the nauseating opulence of a haunted castle. The much-hyped video sequences may be too numerous and pointless in many cases, but they create a peculiar bond between you and the protagonist, as you watch her react to everything she notices in photorealistic detail. Those videos of the heroine adjusting her hair or curiously poking suspicious household items may be mundane, but that is exactly what makes the ensuing horror effects more prominent and long-lasting.

Exploration is accompanied by cozy MIDI music, but the movies boast symphonic soundtrack with occasional choir. The music that plays when you first load the game is singularly impressive: it is a real cantata written in over-saturated late 19th century style, which itself took some cues from medieval church music. The amalgamation of video, music, and interactivity are best displayed in the game's final chapter, which is the only one actually having what is commonly called interactive movie gameplay: you have to make the right choices while watching a tensely scripted sequence unfold.

The Bad
The guys from Sierra must have been too busy orchestrating the music score, filming the main actress opening drawers, and researching cases of psychotic behavior, because they seem to have forgotten all about the most important component of game design: the gameplay.

Indeed, stripped of its shiny appearance, Phantasmagoria turns out to be an impoverished, rudimentary adventure game, weak and pitiful like a fasting vegetarian cat. Suffice to say that the first King's Quest, produced eleven years prior by the same designer, is a more advanced and more interactive game. It is as if all progress in the genre achieved by Sierra and other developers in all those years has been negated.

Phantasmagoria is woefully easy. It has only a handful of what could be considered puzzles if they weren't trivially obvious item manipulations along the lines of "use key on door". The rest of the game is pretty much all aimless wandering. Like a Japanese adventure, Phantasmagoria is full of annoyingly awkward, ridiculously artificial scripting constituting the main obstacle in your path: if you knew exactly which particular room will magically trigger the next event, you'd be able to finish the entire game in a matter of minutes. All you do in the game during six chapters out of seven is wander around and click on things without any apparent reason, knowing that one of those meaningless actions will let you proceed.

Remember how endearingly fulfilling it was to try out stuff in adventure games and witness the game commenting it in the form of text descriptions? Well, there is nothing like that in Phantasmagoria. Instead of well-written commentaries the only feedback you'll get here are nondescript short movies. Even worse is the fact that nearly nothing in that lush, degenerate scenery can be interacted with. You enter a room full of furniture and trinkets, but the game only allows you to click on one or two spots. To put it simply, you hardly ever play Phantasmagoria; you watch it.

Unfortunately, even as a movie Phantasmagoria is not very good. There are interesting elements in the story, but otherwise the whole thing makes next to no sense. Adrianne, the main protagonist, prefers to stand coquettishly in front of a mirror and comb her hair instead of running the hell out of a house where bloody visions pop out of fireplaces and a tender pony-tailed husband can become an overacting homicidal maniac at any moment. Described as an intellectual, Adrienne nevertheless exhibits behavior traits of an insultingly submissive and oftentimes plainly stupid individual, neither displaying believable emotional or mental damages caused by the unspeakable horrors she witnesses, nor showing any traces of logic and willpower, walking from room to room like a zombie even when it becomes perfectly clear that the place is haunted.

Also, I found the amount of sickening scenes of torture and murder in the second half of the game excessive. The story would have been much more convincing if there were only one particular criminal act to investigate, with more background and evidence than we eventually receive for the several victims depicted in the game. The horror becomes grotesque and, inadvertently, almost cartoony as we begin to feel emotional numbness caused by the proliferation of violence.

The Bottom Line
No amount of lavishly decadent digitized decor and symphonic tracks with Latin lyrics can change the fact that Phantasmagoria is an overbloated, cheesy horror story with tiny bits of gameplay collapsing under the weight of multimedia aspirations. There is appeal and historic interest here, but it doesn't justify giving up on quality adventure gameplay Sierra has been delivering for years. For a better representation of the same technology and style, try the sequel or The Beast Within.

The Good
Adrienne Delaney and her husband Donald have justed moved into a large mansion. Adrienne hopes that the gothic setting will help her to write a novel, while Donald is hoping to test his skills as a photographer. Alas, supernatural forces get in the way.

If you played an adventure game before, then you should have no trouble picking up this game's basic mechanics. The player takes control of Adrienne as she interacts with various Nonplayable Characters (NPC) and picks up just about everything that is not nailed down, in order to solve various puzzles.

Gameplay mechanics are simple and user-friendly. The game also looks great. Phantasmagoria takes advantage of the CD-ROM medium to offer up extensive Full Motion Video.

Thanks to Blue Screen technology and CGI, the game's characters and locations are certainly more realistic then adventure games designed with traditional, cartoon-style graphics. What about the atmosphere and the overall story?

Well, you will certainly feel alone in the mansion. The loneliness is helped by the fact that Donald is noticeably absent, only to become steadily more erratic and violent as the game progresses.

As the story unfolds, you learn that the mansion is indeed haunted, with the past lives of its former residents weaving a tangled web of jealousy, betrayal, murder and demonic meddling.

This game is certainly not for children or people who get offended easily. By the time you complete the game, you will have seen quite a bit of blood, gore and what can only be described as extreme domestic abuse.

This last point is one reason why the game is controversial. The main antagonist had a nasty habit of abusing and eventually murdering his wives.

The heroine in the game becomes the victim of domestic abuse herself through her husband. The most infamous scene is where the heroine is essentially raped by her husband.

I think that the intention was to deal with the problem of domestic abuse without being exploitative. It succeeds in doing so, mostly.

The Bad
Phantasmagoria is a game that has not aged particularly well. The graphics will not impress modern gamers, and, even by the standards of 1996, the quality of the Full Motion Video is sometimes medicore.

One of the NPCs in the game is developmentally disabled, and it's cringy to watch. Even though I suspect the designers felt that they were being progressive for featuring a disabled character.

Domestic abuse is a serious social problem and while I commend the designers of the game for wanting to deal with real-life problems, it's cringy to watch.

Especially when you consider the fact that after the heroine is raped by her own husband, she does not respond like a person that was abused in such a manner.

She does not call the police and she seems more annoyed and shocked about the rape than anything else.

Last, but not least, is one of those adventure games where it is possible to make the game unwinnable. In the last chapter of the game, if you fail to collect one of two religious artifacts, you will not be able to defeat the final boss.

This can be frustrating because the game does not make it clear that you need one of these artifacts and, near the end of the game you cannot go back and pick up one of these items. So, after playing the game for several hours, you may find yourself unable to complete the game because you are missing one item.

If you do beat the game, you are treated to a fairly short ending. Frankly, I was really expecting a better ending. It ends up a rather depressing note too.

The Bottom Line
Phantasmagoria is a classic Sierra adventure game that combines Full Motion Video with Survival Horror elements.

The Good
Wow! This truly is a great game. It's about a woman named Adrienne Delaney (Victoria Morsell), who has moved into a big mansion, with her husband. What she doesn't know is that it is haunted. The game consists of 7 chapters (7 cd's) of pure horror. The game is very fun to play and the intense plot draws you in and you want to keep switching cd’s till you get to the horrifying 7th cd. Phantasmagoria has some intense scenes, but they are not as bad as some people say. Most of the gore you see is just really quick glimpses, but if that’s still too much for you there is a setting that blurs it all or you can just skip it by pressing ESC. If you are a Video gamer or you just like to watch movies you need to get this game.

The Bad
Well nothing's perfect. First off, the story is about 85% ripped off from Stanley Kubrick’s "The Shining". Also the acting is a bit poor and the puzzles are really easy. You can beat the game without seeing every plot turn, so you should explore everything in the game. Finally, if you just hate FMV games, this game won't change your views. FMV games are my hobby so I just naturally love this game.

The Bottom Line
For the 30 dollars it is going for now, you should definitely buy this game. If you like "The Shining", you should definitely look into this game.