Phantasmagoria

First of all I don't agree with what many reviewers complain about - lack of complexity of puzzles and short playtime. Firstly becouse this game has enormous amount of "unnecessary content". If you only focus on what's necessary, you finish the game in mere hours. Finding all the "cool" stuff is quite tricky. I haven't seen the game with so many stuff you can miss if you follow just the main plotline. Secondly the game was MEANT to be simple and movie-like. It's like accussing a netbook that it has a small size monitor. Sure playing SHD movies won't do but that's not what the netbook is for. That being said, one must admit - the script is awful and consist of the most cliched horror tricks, acting ranges from mediocre to terrible, music, camera angles, directing, tension - all of this is plain silly. If it was a movie, i wouldn't bother. But as an "interactive movie" it has its charm. First of all, as a piece of gaming history. Secondly, i actually immersed myself in the gameplay, just by the fact that I was directing the protagonist, that i was the player, exploring the mansion, wondering what happens next. Thridly, well, it's just unexplainable, this kitschy, nostalgic charm. The creators were too much focused on the ideal of an "interactive movie" so they tried to force on the player what i would call "fake replayability". By that i mean that if you do things in the certain order you progress further without being able to backtrack and see what scenes you have missed and most of the time you cannot reload becouse there's just one save slot. If you die at the end and choose to quit instead of retry, then the whole game saves as a "movie with a bad ending". That's a bit unfair. If you want a really good fmv type game, see Gabriel Knight 2. If you're a kitsch-loving freak or are interested in the history of computer gaming you have to take a look on this one.

I love fmv games and this is up there with gabriel knight 2

There are some interesting aspects to Phantasmagoria. The visuals are cool. and the campy horror atmosphere is well done. I thought the art design of the various locations is really appealing and though the character actors are poor, they fit the genre very well. I remember when this game first came out, and the large amount of hype surrounding it. FMV was the cool new thing because of CD-Roms, and this game was the poster child for a higher budget attempt at a FMV "game." Like almost all FMV "games" from the 1990's, Phantasmagoria never really plays like a game. Sure, there are items to collect and places to use them, but the items are simply used to trigger FMV sequences and advance the story. If this is all you crave, then this story is for you. However, if you want a game in the traditional sense, keep looking. (There are no puzzles worth mentioning here, it's not that kind of trip.) Personally, I don't like this kind of title. I get bored playing FMV stuff because the dead time spent walking around ruins the narrative for me, and there are not enough puzzles and stuff to keep those "walking around times" interesting in Phantasmagoria. If I want to watch a creepy story, I'll rent a real horror movie, and if I want to play a game, I want a real game. For me, this hybrid (that is more story than game) completely fails. I wanted to stop playing almost always. The only thing that got me through this one was nostalgia. It gets three stars based just on the art design and the honesty in the character acting.

The beginning is a tad slow and the ending is weird to say the least but a large majority of this game should have you sitting on the edge of your computer chair thinking, "WTF" :D

The graphics/actor animation is good, though some of the movie clips were rather grainy. The basic theme was good, though the treatment a bit corny and stereotypic at times (eg, the characterisation of Syrus as being a retarded country bumpkin). Generally the order in which solves problems and collects inventory items is not an issue, till one gets into the final chapter: then watch out. it gets very frenetic. But one is given a chance to retry if one screws up. some inventory items stay there to the bitter end even though of no further use (eg, the hammer). But I enjoyed playing it and soloutions were reasonably straightforward. The Aussies must be very prudish to have banned this game simply because of the "rape" scene (But I'm unsure quite when that occured -- I assume today, even the Aussies wouldn't ban it with what we have today in the movies)