Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria

The Good
I thought this game was a massive cornball. No really, that is good!

Phantasmagoria was one of the first true movie-based adventures. It tried to be a frightening, high budget computer horror adventure. Did it fail? It wasn't scary that's for sure. But, so what? It was a fun ride. Short, gory, technically impressive, and somewhat fun. Yeah, somewhat.

You can beat it in about 3 hours too, if you really try. So, if you hate it you can get comfort from knowing it'll be over really soon!

7 CDs. Wow. I think that's still an unbeaten record too.

The Bad
I thought the portrayal of the main character was pretty pathetic. I'm all for female heroines but why do they need to be portrayed as bimbo's without brains going braless? This was especially odd to me considering the writer of the story and major influence during development was a woman, Roberta Williams. I suppose the point was to make it sorta similar to all those bad C-level '70s and '80s horror flicks. Whatever.

The Bottom Line
An old-skool movie based adventure title which tries to fit with the campy hollywood-bimbo-chick-horror-movie-with-gory-nonsense theme. It's a fun time to whip through this in a night with some friends.

The Good
Nothing is really good about Phantasmagoria... the only thing that really made me freeze in awe with this game is the fact that it comes on 7 seperate CDs -- which is not necessarily a good thing, but definitely scary.

The Bad
Terrible acting on the actors' side, a pretty dumb storyline, completely unproportional scenario design (why is it that every house has to be a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?), passable graphics as best and same goes for the music and horrible gameplay.
What's worse is, the game isn't even remotely scary!

I believe Phantasmagoria was a complete flop in every respect, which is a shame considering that its wonderful sequel Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh wasn't really a sequel at all, but rather a redefinition of the genre.

Too bad Sierra didn't put as much effort into this game as they did with their other masterpieces.

The Bottom Line
A pretty bad adventure game that takes up a ridiculous amount of space without a good reason. If you expect to find spine-tingling horror video sequences here, you'd be more than disappointed.

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.