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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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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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 65% (based on 27 ratings)

Players

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

Truly horrifying ... horrifying gameplay that is.

The Good
To be honest, there's really nothing much about the game that I can say I truly liked. OK, the video was a bit smoother than the original Phantasmagoria. There ... that's it.

The Bad
Let me list the reasons. The film sequences draw from almost every B-Grade horror movie ever made. The acting ... absolutely awful. Did they have to make the disembodied voices sound like Fozzie Bear? Gameplay that largely consists of inane puzzles that really have little to do with advancing the plot in any meaningful way. I never felt any real horror playing the game, except at the thought that I had wasted so much time with it.


The Bottom Line
Think of the worst horror movie you ever saw. Then remove the humour that you usually find in such flicks, and you have Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh.

DOS · by Les Nessman (265) · 2006

Time to spice up office routine with murders and kinky sex

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.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2016

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.