Its kitchen-sink approach to horror is occasionally brutal but ultimately silly; it's way more effective as an erotic thriller, a subgenre that rose to popularity at around the same time Roberta Williams's career began to get some traction. Beyond just the sideboob and the harrowing rape, Phantasmagoria's tale of multigenerational domestic abuse fits the erotic thriller's interest in deconstructing the artifice of domestic life, and while its inciting incident is far more fantastical than the likes of Basic Instinct or Body Double, how better to convey artifice than plastering your Real Life FMV Woman protagonist across an array of insane CGI backdrops? Even when the character writing seriously stretches the story's credibility and the acting falls short, the marriage between aesthetic sensibility and thematic preoccupation deftly carries the game home. As someone who finds little intrigue or value in adventure game logic, the relatively simple puzzles are also a huge plus for me.
As a huge fan of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, I knew one day I'd have to play the original game. Hell, my copy of both of these games is the Stagefright double pack that includes both games. I bought it because I was so interested in Puzzle of Flesh but since it was coming with both games I grabbed it up.
A lot of years went by before I finally played the original game and I found it to be all right but nothing special when compared to how much I loved the sequel. Still, it was nice to add it to my game completion list for posterity's sake.
A lot of years went by before I finally played the original game and I found it to be all right but nothing special when compared to how much I loved the sequel. Still, it was nice to add it to my game completion list for posterity's sake.
This review contains spoilers
I went into this expecting some real Sierra Adventure Game bullshit, but as it turns out, this is a surprisingly benevolent one of those: unlike many of its contemporaries, Phantasmagoria features a hint system you can use at any time without penalty. Perhaps real adventure game sickos would hold this against the game, but to any normal person this is a much more enjoyable experience than getting immediately frustrated and sticking to a guide for the rest of the playthrough. I briefly glanced at a guide at the very end of the game, but otherwise found it to be quite breezy and fun.
As far as the story and all that, well, it's as cheesy as you'd expect from FMV games of the era, but it's got its moments. Getting deeper and deeper into the mysteries your weird ass house contains is sincerely intriguing, and the subplot of domestic abuse is handled with surprising gravitas. I do, however, find it to be undermined by the supernatural element that supposedly caused it: I do not believe the demons of Phantasmagoria are analogous to, say, BOB's stand-in for the evil brought into the world by mankind—or even that it's making all that salient a point on a controlling relationship at all. Rather, it just kinda seems that your Good Husband went Bad because some ghosts got his ass or whatever. I don't know. Feels like some great lost potential, even if it gets some things right along the way.
Nevertheless, it's a worthy experience for sure, and engaging to a degree I never expected when I went into it.
As far as the story and all that, well, it's as cheesy as you'd expect from FMV games of the era, but it's got its moments. Getting deeper and deeper into the mysteries your weird ass house contains is sincerely intriguing, and the subplot of domestic abuse is handled with surprising gravitas. I do, however, find it to be undermined by the supernatural element that supposedly caused it: I do not believe the demons of Phantasmagoria are analogous to, say, BOB's stand-in for the evil brought into the world by mankind—or even that it's making all that salient a point on a controlling relationship at all. Rather, it just kinda seems that your Good Husband went Bad because some ghosts got his ass or whatever. I don't know. Feels like some great lost potential, even if it gets some things right along the way.
Nevertheless, it's a worthy experience for sure, and engaging to a degree I never expected when I went into it.
Aujourd'hui je lui donnerais une note différente, mais ce jeu a été un traumatisme majeur de mon enfance.
This review contains spoilers
o jogo é sim bastante interessante se pensarmos como na época de lançamento, eu sequer sabia que point and click conseguia me cativar até experimentar desta vez, sinceramente é bastante datado, mas todo esse conjunto é o que traz charme pro jogo, principalmente nos visuais, com personagens reais em cenários até toscos às vezes, portas e paredes modeladas como massinha e que ficam pixelizadas depois de inseridas no jogo, assentos desproporcionais pro tamanho humano e etc.
a reta final é bem ruim na minha opinião (cap. 6 e 7), exceto pelo momento em que o diabo passa a perseguir a protagonista e vc precisa impedir ela de morrer, mas o resto é tao vergonhoso quanto triste, a personagem principal alucinando nos espelhos é o cúmulo da esquisitice, além do vilão despirocando completamente mas usando uma atuação enervante e nada convicente, tudo faz vc se perguntar o porquê de estar jogando aquilo, até que chega o final e o sentimento de realização te faz perceber o quanto foi uma experiência agradável.
obs: o jogo é bastante confuso e bem ambientado
a reta final é bem ruim na minha opinião (cap. 6 e 7), exceto pelo momento em que o diabo passa a perseguir a protagonista e vc precisa impedir ela de morrer, mas o resto é tao vergonhoso quanto triste, a personagem principal alucinando nos espelhos é o cúmulo da esquisitice, além do vilão despirocando completamente mas usando uma atuação enervante e nada convicente, tudo faz vc se perguntar o porquê de estar jogando aquilo, até que chega o final e o sentimento de realização te faz perceber o quanto foi uma experiência agradável.
obs: o jogo é bastante confuso e bem ambientado
Grottiges Schauspiel, aber doch spannend, unterhaltsam und mit einer äußerst schön gestalteten Umgebung (für die Zeit und Technik).
Außerdem hat mich die Suche nach dem Deutsch-Patch auf mein heutiges Lieblingsforum geführt – CompiWare!
Außerdem hat mich die Suche nach dem Deutsch-Patch auf mein heutiges Lieblingsforum geführt – CompiWare!
Chock full of Sierra jank, including the longest FMV animations you can possibly imagine, but there’s some evocative horror imagery in here, and the art assets are all wonderfully strange. Appreciate the mostly easy puzzles, too.
The Hintkeeper should be in every game. He has the most dramatic way of describing everything in the game. You could show him a set of like, scuba gear, and he'd say some shit like, "This will help you descend into the deepest depths, but are you sure you'll be able to come back...up?" Absolutely divine decision putting his ass in the game.
So the sequel, A Puzzle of Flesh, is the superior game and one of my all-time favorite adventure games, but...look, I'll keep it real, I love this game. This game and I go way back. Some of the death scenes scared the fucking shit out of me as a 10 year old and they're still genuinely shocking, so the game was for a long time this boogeyman to me. Like, this HAD to be the scariest game ever, and on the early 2000s internet where you were mostly relegated to screenshots of games, just seeing stills from it had me looking over my shoulder...
of course, the game is VERY funny. Nowadays, I love it because it's so charming. I love FMVs, I love PC Midi music, I love the huge expressions actors had to make to be visible through compression, and I love the bombast and drama therein. I recently replayed it with my partner and we both were engrossed, it was such a great experience.
To be honest, I think the chase scene at the end holds up. For its tension and cheese factor in equal amounts. I don't think the game does anything truly remarkably, but if you are into FMV stuff from the 90s? God you have GOTTA check this one out.
So the sequel, A Puzzle of Flesh, is the superior game and one of my all-time favorite adventure games, but...look, I'll keep it real, I love this game. This game and I go way back. Some of the death scenes scared the fucking shit out of me as a 10 year old and they're still genuinely shocking, so the game was for a long time this boogeyman to me. Like, this HAD to be the scariest game ever, and on the early 2000s internet where you were mostly relegated to screenshots of games, just seeing stills from it had me looking over my shoulder...
of course, the game is VERY funny. Nowadays, I love it because it's so charming. I love FMVs, I love PC Midi music, I love the huge expressions actors had to make to be visible through compression, and I love the bombast and drama therein. I recently replayed it with my partner and we both were engrossed, it was such a great experience.
To be honest, I think the chase scene at the end holds up. For its tension and cheese factor in equal amounts. I don't think the game does anything truly remarkably, but if you are into FMV stuff from the 90s? God you have GOTTA check this one out.
The ending sequence is hot garbage, but the story itself is kinda amazing. It's basically the shining from the wife's perspective.
"A Horrifyingly Boring Point-n-Click Adventure"
As someone who is still getting used to the point-n-click genre, its been a struggle to figure out what works for me and what doesn't. I enjoy the narrative aspect of point-n-click games, but the puzzles, dialogue, and environment interactions have to be "just right" for me to effectively enjoy the experience. I hoped that some of these things could be satisfied with the FMV cheesiness and horror-themed story of Phantasmagoria , but I was left thoroughly disappointed.
This game started off in a very confusing manner. A very jarring and random opening cutscene played, and I was immediately thrown into the game. There wasn't really a lot to work with when it came to story at this point, so I got to controlling my character. While the general function of a point-n-click is still there with this title, the UI is utterly atrocious. Nothing on the bottom screen is labeled very well (or at all), so I had to mess with a lot of things blindly in order to figure out what did what. Additionally, most of the game screen is covered by the UI, so you can't even see much of the game's detail as clearly as you would without.
After fumbling with the "options" and the other unmarked UI elements, I continued to explore and get my bearings with the game. It took nearly an hour for anything interesting to happen, and a lot of the exploring I did led me to very boring manuscripts or dumb interactions with items. The dialogue in this game is also really, really terrible. I'm all for cheesiness if the rest of the game is solid, but in Phantasmagoria's first few hours, most of the basic gameplay pattern is stale and there are no real plot developments.
Some of the puzzles are also pretty unintuitive. I finally gave up when a puzzle involved looking through a hole in a wall, and then doing it again to start moving bricks around. I'm not a big fan of getting tips from in-game help options , so I avoided using it. I figure that any puzzle should be solvable, so long as its logical - therefore, its only my fault if i miss something obvious. With this puzzle, had I not just randomly repeated my actions a second time, I would have never found the solution. Instead, I only ended up figuring out how to do the puzzle by looking it up, and it ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back at that point in terms of gameplay.
However, there was still some story to experience as well, but that didn't last long either. The thing that killed the story aspect of the game for me were the overly long cutscenes. Dialogue and movements would occur normally... sometimes. However, there would be extended periods where responses + actions would take way too long to happen. I got really annoyed + impatient after a while, and finally just gave up playing the game. It just wasn't worth it to sit and wait through meaningless actions if I wouldn't get any payoff in the story aspect, and many cutscenes were more than a minute long. That adds up after a while! At this point, I figured I would look up the plot to see if there was anything I would miss out on if I didn't stick with the game. To sum the story up without spoilers - I'm glad I didn't stick with it. Its really just a bunch of random nonsense that is held up by repetitive and unrewarding exploration along with illogical puzzles.
I didn't enjoy my time with Phantasmagoria . Its an incredibly dated and unrewarding point-n-click game, and doesn't have a lot of refinement or care put into many of its systems. I wouldn't recommend it to many, unless you are a really big fan of older games, the point-n-click genre, horror, and unpolished, boring experiences.
Final Verdict: 1/10 (Terrible)
As someone who is still getting used to the point-n-click genre, its been a struggle to figure out what works for me and what doesn't. I enjoy the narrative aspect of point-n-click games, but the puzzles, dialogue, and environment interactions have to be "just right" for me to effectively enjoy the experience. I hoped that some of these things could be satisfied with the FMV cheesiness and horror-themed story of Phantasmagoria , but I was left thoroughly disappointed.
This game started off in a very confusing manner. A very jarring and random opening cutscene played, and I was immediately thrown into the game. There wasn't really a lot to work with when it came to story at this point, so I got to controlling my character. While the general function of a point-n-click is still there with this title, the UI is utterly atrocious. Nothing on the bottom screen is labeled very well (or at all), so I had to mess with a lot of things blindly in order to figure out what did what. Additionally, most of the game screen is covered by the UI, so you can't even see much of the game's detail as clearly as you would without.
After fumbling with the "options" and the other unmarked UI elements, I continued to explore and get my bearings with the game. It took nearly an hour for anything interesting to happen, and a lot of the exploring I did led me to very boring manuscripts or dumb interactions with items. The dialogue in this game is also really, really terrible. I'm all for cheesiness if the rest of the game is solid, but in Phantasmagoria's first few hours, most of the basic gameplay pattern is stale and there are no real plot developments.
Some of the puzzles are also pretty unintuitive. I finally gave up when a puzzle involved looking through a hole in a wall, and then doing it again to start moving bricks around. I'm not a big fan of getting tips from in-game help options , so I avoided using it. I figure that any puzzle should be solvable, so long as its logical - therefore, its only my fault if i miss something obvious. With this puzzle, had I not just randomly repeated my actions a second time, I would have never found the solution. Instead, I only ended up figuring out how to do the puzzle by looking it up, and it ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back at that point in terms of gameplay.
However, there was still some story to experience as well, but that didn't last long either. The thing that killed the story aspect of the game for me were the overly long cutscenes. Dialogue and movements would occur normally... sometimes. However, there would be extended periods where responses + actions would take way too long to happen. I got really annoyed + impatient after a while, and finally just gave up playing the game. It just wasn't worth it to sit and wait through meaningless actions if I wouldn't get any payoff in the story aspect, and many cutscenes were more than a minute long. That adds up after a while! At this point, I figured I would look up the plot to see if there was anything I would miss out on if I didn't stick with the game. To sum the story up without spoilers - I'm glad I didn't stick with it. Its really just a bunch of random nonsense that is held up by repetitive and unrewarding exploration along with illogical puzzles.
I didn't enjoy my time with Phantasmagoria . Its an incredibly dated and unrewarding point-n-click game, and doesn't have a lot of refinement or care put into many of its systems. I wouldn't recommend it to many, unless you are a really big fan of older games, the point-n-click genre, horror, and unpolished, boring experiences.
Final Verdict: 1/10 (Terrible)
Phantasmagoria is living proof that with a budget of $4.5 million, the work of over 200 creatives, and the most cutting-edge software of 1995, you too can create grade-A B-movie shlock.
The final chase scene made me despise this game.
I expected a cryptic game with moon logic, and was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't. The hint button is a great addition that save me from a lot of frustration. I was expecting to be pleasantly surprised.
That was until the final scene of the game. Hours of build up for that load of bull?? It honestly soured the whole experience for me.
I expected a cryptic game with moon logic, and was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't. The hint button is a great addition that save me from a lot of frustration. I was expecting to be pleasantly surprised.
That was until the final scene of the game. Hours of build up for that load of bull?? It honestly soured the whole experience for me.
queria ter jogado antes
This review contains spoilers
definitely a wild ride. i feel like i bonded with the protagonist..... i'm always just distraught, standing there and looking around the room too.
edit: i feel like this review is too jokey. so here goes again: yes this game is an FMV game and has all of the issues that come with it, but it's remarkably smooth for a 90s point and click, and the team really wanted to have a game that was frightening and mature. at times the violence against women seems gratuitous, but I think the fear Williams is getting at is the fear of seeing a boyfriend or a husband transform by jealousy into something violent and unrecognizable. Adrienne and Don's relationship turns from one based on love to one about control. a poignant plot detail is that Adrienne almost leaves the house before the final confrontation and decides not to when she remembers how good her relationship with Don was, but staying in the house is what leads to her killing Don. the theme of abusive husbands is what keeps it tied to reality and gives the frights power.
I have some small nitpicks and compliments too--cyrus and his mom (oops what is her name) are a bit uncomfortable in their characterization and don't provide the comic relief the writers think they do. on the flip side, the scene where the mom coughs up talking goo is fucking awesome. also, I love the bizarre 3d renders of fake Maine.... I love Nipawomsett
edit: i feel like this review is too jokey. so here goes again: yes this game is an FMV game and has all of the issues that come with it, but it's remarkably smooth for a 90s point and click, and the team really wanted to have a game that was frightening and mature. at times the violence against women seems gratuitous, but I think the fear Williams is getting at is the fear of seeing a boyfriend or a husband transform by jealousy into something violent and unrecognizable. Adrienne and Don's relationship turns from one based on love to one about control. a poignant plot detail is that Adrienne almost leaves the house before the final confrontation and decides not to when she remembers how good her relationship with Don was, but staying in the house is what leads to her killing Don. the theme of abusive husbands is what keeps it tied to reality and gives the frights power.
I have some small nitpicks and compliments too--cyrus and his mom (oops what is her name) are a bit uncomfortable in their characterization and don't provide the comic relief the writers think they do. on the flip side, the scene where the mom coughs up talking goo is fucking awesome. also, I love the bizarre 3d renders of fake Maine.... I love Nipawomsett
after hearing tons of stuff about sierra games being bullshit this was surprisingly playable, I did use a guide but it wasn't that often. definitely fits into the b movie camp but I won't be caught dead complaining about that. I'll be honest I mostly played this one because the second one looks really fascinating, but I enjoyed this one for what it was. The 3d backgrounds with the live action sprites and the music that sounds chiptune half the time gave such an engaging (albeit unintentional) dissonance, i think it could be done well purposefully. also something I found out apparently adrian's outfit is like that because the actress showed up on set one day dressed like that and the director decided to make that the attire of the character, i am infinitely curious of what her original outfit was supposed to be. this is one of those games where you'll know if you'll enjoy it so there's really no point in telling you why or why not you shouldn't.
Bom, tirando o fato de ser um point and click extremamente datado, tanto nos seus visuais, quanto nos diálogos pagos com uma coxinha e um suco, tentando pensar com o olhar da época, é um jogo interessante, teve seus momentos pra mim, o "gore" e os diálogos comicamente péssimos são o charme do jogo, também não posso esquecer da arte, que é interessante
I love schlocky FMV games from the 90s, and this is really one of them. Plays better than most of it's contemporaries. Play with a guide or with extreme patience.
wow, I loved this? and I didn’t even think I liked point-and-click adventures? most of the puzzles were fun, even! there’s such a manic, gonzo energy to this thing’s ambition; also, a real charm to how 1990s it is. one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had in a while.
Takes disc swapping to a whole other level, people complain about riven, at leas that doesnt have 7, 8 if you're on saturn. Besides that its okay, kind of interesting story wise but I wouldn't recommend it.
Creo que, como experimento, este juego no está mal, pero tampoco es nada del otro mundo. Aunque el concepto se ve interesante y el primer episodio te vende bastante bien la premisa de explorar esta casa cada vez más grande, el resto intenta rellenar lo que puede sin darte apenas direcciones. Además, la manera en que los (muy mal grabados) actores interactúan con los fondos hechos con Alias era interesante a ratos, pero no terminaba de encajarme para los momentos más importantes. Me resultó especialmente desagradable la parte de la v*olacón, que entre la música, los clips de sonido reciclados y los actores intentando hacerlo lo mejor posible me dio ganas de desinstalar el juego. Aparte de eso, creo que la historia tiene una premisa relativamente interesante que contar, pero que choca constantemente con las tendencias más fabulísticas que Roberta Williams siempre ha solido exhibir (Cyrus y Harriet me resultaron especialmente insidiosos). En conclusión, un juego que podría haber sido mucho mejor y que realmente no se merecía el presupuesto que tuvo, pero qué le vamos a hacer.
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I think this is a pretty interesting experiment, but nothing to write home about. While the concept is nice and the first chapter is particularly well made, the rest feels like it tries to pad out as much as possible without giving you any directions. Also, the way that real actors collided with the Alias backgrounds was interesting at times, but really jarring at others. The part that sat really badly for me was obviously the r*pe scene, what with the recycled sound clips, the ridiculous soundtrack and the actors trying to their job in the middle of it all. The whole thing reeks of amateurism, which is a shame because you can tell the story has an interesting premise. But it soon falls short to Roberta William's penchant for fables (the characters of Harriet and Cyrus were especially cumbersome). In all, this could have been a lot better, but ultimately it wasn't worth the budget they spent to.
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I think this is a pretty interesting experiment, but nothing to write home about. While the concept is nice and the first chapter is particularly well made, the rest feels like it tries to pad out as much as possible without giving you any directions. Also, the way that real actors collided with the Alias backgrounds was interesting at times, but really jarring at others. The part that sat really badly for me was obviously the r*pe scene, what with the recycled sound clips, the ridiculous soundtrack and the actors trying to their job in the middle of it all. The whole thing reeks of amateurism, which is a shame because you can tell the story has an interesting premise. But it soon falls short to Roberta William's penchant for fables (the characters of Harriet and Cyrus were especially cumbersome). In all, this could have been a lot better, but ultimately it wasn't worth the budget they spent to.
CONSUMITEEEE FUROOOOOREEEEE
i love this game, it's such a cheesefest. plus it's not easy as shit like other point and clicks from the era, that's a plus.
i love this game, it's such a cheesefest. plus it's not easy as shit like other point and clicks from the era, that's a plus.
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