Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh

The Good
Phantamsagoria 2 is a sequel to one of Sierra's most popular game Phantasmagoria. In several places it is better, well, in others it is far less fun. Comparing to its prequel, Phantasmagoria 2 looks better. No more artificial 3d rooms, no more poor graphics. The quality of videos here is higher (which doesn't actually mean that it is good).

Storyline has never been the strongest part in horror games such as Phantasmagoria or Harvester, exactly the same as here. But at least we can find some advanced plot, not really of quality compared to Deus Ex but at some point you could get lost.

In horror games (especially in FMVs) have to make the player be afraid. But there are at least two ways to do that. One is through hectoliters of blood and violence, another is through detailed plot and mysterious atmosphere. Phantasmagoria 2 has neither of them but uses some things from both. In uncensored mode some violent scenes appear but for me, even though I'm definitely not a fan of poor horror films, they can be accepted. They are ugly, yes, but they are not sick. I wouldn't recommend it to players below 16 years old, but if you are above that, you can play without that much stress (just don't forget that doesn't mean that all scenes aren't violent, on some of them you will really want to turn your head and look at people walking outside). Music in some part (for example on map of the city) makes the atmosphere even better and not every scene is violent, some will of course scare you without showing anything red on the screen.

The Bad
Phantasmagoria 2 will always be compared to the first part. And in some cases the latter definitely wins. Adrianne in Phantasmagoria 1 was a normal girl, nothing strange. The game consisted of 7 chapters and the atmosphere was heavier every day. The first day is just a "talk to everyone, see everything, do anything" part (maybe apart form the end). Adrianne's husband, possessed by the demon becomes more and more mean and dangerous but real violence is shown in fourth chapter. In Phantasmagoria 2 real violence (and one of the most violent scene in the whole game to say the truth) is shown in the beginning of second chapter out of five. So here you're just thrown into the game and ugly scenes begin very soon.

Also, Phantasmagoria 1 had, to me at least, better storyline. Curtis Craig is living in a big city, working with computers, vising clubs of doubtful reputation etc etc. Adrianne was living in a haunted villa, sometimes visiting a small city close to her residence. More classical to me.

The Bottom Line
Both parts of Phantasmagoria are quite difficult to get today (at least in some parts of the world), you should choose the second part if you like more technical and futuristic story (not that it is a science fiction game). But be aware that, although better than in the first part, the graphics is still quite bad.

The Good
Puzzle of Flesh is Sierra's second foray into the world of mature-themed horror, following the controversial Phantasmagoria. It has a markedly different tone and somewhat ramped-up gameplay, but its overall intention is the same: shock the player with macabre mature themes within the frames of simplified, yet functional adventure mechanics.

The gameplay in Puzzle of Flesh is, in fact, better than in the original Phantasmagoria. It is more varied and dynamic, and it offers more interactivity. You'll encounter realistic computer-based tasks (such as getting a password, responding to an e-mail, etc.), and the last section of the game shines with tricky inventory-based puzzles. There are simpler tasks that follow common logic - using tools, having appointments, etc. There are many ways to interact with the characters as well: for example, conversation trees based solely on using an inventory object on a character pop out frequently. In general, Puzzle of Flesh lets you play more than the first game, where you basically roam about, hoping to encounter something of interest.

The game scores points for trying to be as realistic as possible in the way it treats its ordinary modern-day setting. The characters are surprisingly interesting, and Puzzle of Flesh should be commended for depicting all sorts of social and sexual behavior that are considered "taboo" in most games. In what other game will you find such a subtly and ambiguously presented relationship between two male friends, one of which is gay? What other game has its protagonist cheat on his girlfriend and then have a rather insane, psychologically suspicious relationship with a kinky colleague? The four main characters of the game are all convincingly portrayed and resemble real people more than average video game characters, and not only because they are acted by real people. Compared to the socially isolated and psychologically murky protagonist from the first Phantasmagoria, Curtis is shown in a real society, surrounded by real people, and having problems he reacts to adequately.

There are bright moments in the storytelling. The plot does rely too much on cheap thrills, can get tiresome after the murders begin to pile up, and the ultimate explanation is cheesy and hardly satisfying. However, the initial impact is strong, and what keeps the plot moving are details: you are curious to know how Curtis is going to deal with his troublesome love life, which character will be threatened next by the mysterious murderer, how exactly the protagonist's past has affected his current predicament, and so on. The story is anything but intellectual and mostly feels like a rather awkward amalgam of a horror B-movie and a television drama - but it rarely gets dull.

The Bad
In terms of atmosphere and horror content, the game appears to be inferior to its gameplay-impaired, but genuinely scary and disturbing predecessor. It's not that the sequel is less horrifying than the first game; the problem is, rather, the amount of horror and the way it is distributed throughout the plot. In the first Phantasmagoria, the initial chapters were basically a preparation for the frightening scenes that would come relatively late. Suspense was growing slowly, gradually, breaking only during the dramatic last sequence. Here, the game practically starts with a horror scene, and they keep coming steadily. Each time you look at your mirror you might encounter another FMV showing something creepy. After a while these surprises begin to lose their emotional impact, and you start perceiving them with inappropriate nonchalance.

This is exacerbated by the direction the story eventually adopts. The first game was a stylistically coherent, traditional haunted mansion tale. The more ambitious plot of the sequel takes a strange, unnecessary turn into rather banal science fiction during its later stages, losing much of the credibility and tension it has accumulated up to that point. The disappointing ending sequence does little to alleviate this problem, despite the choice it offers to the player.

While many of the game's puzzles are perfectly intuitive and natural actions, some of them are extremely illogical and feel totally out of place in this horror mystery. This includes the ridiculous wallet-retrieving task early in the game, as well as the overly obscure puzzle in the alien world in the last chapter, among others.

The locations in Puzzle of Flesh are still photographs, and exploring them can be a painful experience. You'll be spending way too much time scanning the screen with your mouse cursor, hoping for it to magically light up when something of interest comes up; more often than not it's just a path to another area or a crucial, awkwardly obfuscated close-up you've missed before. It is also needless to say that the lack of precise interaction instructions ("look", "take") is a hard blow to adventure gameplay.

The game's biggest problem is its pacing. It is much too fond of an infuriating gameplay element seemingly taken out of a Japanese adventure: you must frequently perform certain actions to trigger completely unrelated events. Puzzle of Flesh can thus easily become frustrating without being challenging; you'll find yourself wandering from location to location, trying to make someone appear or something occur. This turns a sizable portion of the game into aimless and tedious walking and clicking on everything you can notice.

The Bottom Line
Puzzle of Flesh offers more gameplay than its noisy and overblown predecessor, but not enough to satisfy serious fans of pre-FMV Sierra quality. It is an interesting product, but an average adventure 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.