Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria

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
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.

The Good
Oh dear. I bought this on a whim because I wanted to see if this game really was as terrible as PC Gamer had made it out to be. It wasn't. It's worse.

What I liked about the game? Hmm. Well I have to say, I liked the nice heavy weight of the box due to the 7 CDs. And that's all I can think of.

The Bad
And while 7 CDs is kind of a good thing at first (it gives the impression of a long game), it was just ridiculous back then. Hell, a lot of games still don't use this much space.

But the 7 CDs themselves aren't the problem. It's the fact that Sierra chose to store the exact same data on all those 7 CDs with maybe a 10th of the CDs contained different data. Basically, it could easily have fit on 2 CDs if they made you install one CD to your hard drive.

The truth is that Phantasmagoria isn't a game. It's a poor excuse of a B-movie which lets you walk from one area to the other. There's hardly any puzzles at all! To call this an adventure game is a real joke.

Most "puzzles" consisted of you finding the next room you have to walk to. This means walking to every single room in the castle to find the one that will trigger the next movie clip.

The movies are so poorly done, with really awful special effects and horrible acting that it even becomes torture just to watch them.

Luckily, the game only takes an hour to complete or so. 7 CDs for a game which is only a fraction the length of classics like Monkey Island which easily take 10 times longer to complete! A disgrace!

The Bottom Line
Oh, it's easy to describe this game: it's a B-movie disguising itself as a game by making you walk from room to room to see the next piece of the dreadful story. It shouldn't be called a game at all. No, it was lesson to all developers. A lesson that taught them that lots of FMV doesn't make a good game. Games like Under A Killing Moon showed how it should be done, Phantasmagoria shows how NOT to do it.