Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria

The Good
The video capture was mind-blowing at the time. Pre-render backgrounds were decent, if somewhat out of place with the live-action. The music was fantastic. An original score, featuring a huge choir at many points, created the overall feel of the game.

The Bad
The violence was more disgusting than scary. Scenes of torture-killings detracted from the macabre feeling Williams seemed to be going for. The point and click game design made the game to easy (as did the 'hint master' character). The 7-disc bundle was a red-herring in terms of game length -- multiple disc merely prevent constant switching for the various video sequences.

The Bottom Line
Robert Williams, the creator of the King's Quest Series and designed for Phantasmagoria, promised a game where gaming quality would not be sacrificed to support the new video-capture marvel that would be here new series. Too bad she couldn't deliver. Rather than top rate horror adventure, Sierra gave us a pretty-to-look-at, boring-to-play disaster. The acting was sub-par, the puzzles were insultingly simple for any gamer, and the overall 7-disc experience was over in a matter of hours. Truly the beginning of the end for the Sierra empire.

The Good
Phantasmagoria gave me the chills. I did NOT want to play this game after dark, and one of the movie sequences gave me a nasty nightmare. Granted, this was seven years ago, when I was a bit younger and a fairly novice adventure gamer... but the ability of this game to just suck me into its world has stuck with me for all these years. The music was creepy and appropriate, I loved the attention to detail, and for a video game the acting wasn't too bad. The house in which the game is set has a life of its own. But most impoartantly, this is one of the handful of games which I would THINK about even when I wasn't playing. Like a good creepy novel, I both anticipated and dreaded finding out what would happen next. Immersion in the setting, and immersion in the story... for an incurable escapist like myself, this made Phantasmagoria one of the most memorable games I've played.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I appreciated the censoring feature... Of course, after watching the censored scenes curiosity got the best of me and I watched ALMOST all of them in the original gory versions as well.... except one. I'll probably never go back and watch that one, and I appreciate the feature being there so that I never have to.

The Bad
The sheer number of disks promised more gameplay time than was delivered, and some of the disks were so short that I became aggravated at having to change CDs so frequently. In most multi-disk games, finishing a disk seems like a relief, gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Finishing the first disk of Phantasmagoria felt good, but after that it just became a pain.

At the time I played the game for the first time, it seemed appropriately difficult. However, going back through a second time after getting a few more adventure games under my belt, I realized that this is a very easy game. Which can be a good thing and a bad thing. It's not necessarily bad to lose yourself in the beautiful atmosphere of a game without having to think too much... but in general, I'd like to be challenged a bit more. I did finish all seven disks in about a week (couldn't tell you how many hours this far after the fact, but it was quick) and wondered at the time if it was worth my $60... But the game shouldn't cost anything NEAR that much now, so have fun for a week!

The Bottom Line
Fun, creepy, intriguing. Unlike any other game I've played. But unfortunately a little short and easy.

The Good
I'd be lying through my teeth, if I'd claim Phantasmagoria as a good game. In fact I feel quite the opposite: as a game Phantasmagoria fails miserably thanks to poor design choices, but the game is not only thing Phantasmagoria is, as it is actually pretty entertaining, albeit some places rather poorly acted and written, interactive horror movie.

The story takes a couple of chapters to get going, but after it does it easily overcomes the poor design choices and keeps you entertained to the end. The game is actually pretty short, seasoned adventurers should go through it pretty fast, so in that sense it's a good way to spend an evening, if you are looking for b-horror horror.

The musical score is pretty good as well. It provides a nice atmosphere to the game and in FMV sequences the music is just superb.

The acting is mostly OK. The main cast does ham up pretty often, but luckily enough there's some good acting in the mix as well. Victoria Morsell does pretty good as the lead, despite she does have some cringe worthy dialogue. Robert Miano as Zoltan brings in good performance as well.

The Bad
The writing is a bit of a hit and miss. Some aspects of the game are well written, but some are just laughable bad. Some pretty sub par actors manage to enhance the poor quality of the script at places, but luckily enough nothing really important is missed even if you skip those parts.

Some poor design choices hinder the gameplay, such as unnecessary FMV segments in room transition or badly done conversations, which don't flow very naturally.

The graphics are mostly pretty ugly pre-rendered 3D. The FMV sequences look a bit better, but it's difficult to claim Phantasmagoria as a pretty game.

The Bottom Line
Phantasmagoria is a short and easy game. It does have very little merits as a good game, but as a b-movie it works surprisingly well despite it does have more than a couple of cliches in its sleeve of scare tricks.

It's not the best example of FMV games, but there's a lot worse candidates out there. Phantasmagoria is not a total failure, so if you're interested in FMV games you should check it out.