Phantasmagoria

Not a fan. The majority of the game is spent walking around the exact same rooms over and over waiting for a story trigger. There are no puzzles aside from the ending gauntlet, which if you do not have all the required items will lock you into a bad ending. I suppose the gorey finishes were kind of cool. But as far as adventure games go there are many, MANY more that are far superior to this.

Phantasmagoria is a classic but that doesn't mean it's good. I'm going to forget that it was a short game that originally came in seven CDs, because we're talking about the GOG digital version and I'm going to focus in the game itself. I don't mind Full Motion Video, in fact I think I like it, but if you use it, you better use it well, because it needs to be more logical than a movie since you are part of it. Poor acting and some incoherent sequences spoil that, so you can't inmerse youself in the experience nor enjoy it like a movie either. The music does a good job, however it's not enough to help the insustancial plot or the bad script when it comes to scare you. This game isn't scary and, although it tries to be disturbing in various ways, the most it gets it's to be comical. The best I can say is that I didn't get totally bored but the only reason why someone should play this title is for the sake of gaming history knowledge.

It is one of the most beautiful adventure games ever made.

This game is simply BORING. Nothing happens in it, everything is predictable, the most difficulty is to suffer all the brushing hair, sitting down on the sofa, walking up stairs - not to reach anything interesting, just to advance in the "story". After the first hour you'll even forget there's a story, and wait for the occasional kinky stuff, what are really not many. Even the ending is unqualifying. The thing that made this product history is the immense space it takes - it was basically ensured one of your discs will go scratchy and no longer be able to play that part of the game. Ever. Oh, and the infamous rape-sceen. And the fact the puzzles are never surrealistic like in Sam&Max hit the road, so you'll actually find them out instead of the usual random guessing.

Based solely on its own merits, Phantasmagoria is a terrible game: it's extremely linear, many filler animations last far too long, and the acting is like something you'd see on MST3k. On the other hand, this is one of those games that both earns the moniker "so bad it's good" and surpasses it. If you like laughing at bad movies, you'll love this; I have to say, though, the lead actress does a pretty damn good job at appearing legitimately stressed and terrified. The graphics are at the level that the actors don't appear as if in green screens; it meshes just enough. The music is almost perfect, to the point where I wish GOG.com offered the soundtrack as a bonus, but alas. The story, though unoriginal, succeeds at what it needs to do, with no obvious plot holes (apart from a few graphical screw-ups) or significant leaps of faith. To put it simply, you'll laugh, you'll jump, you'll avert your eyes and occassionally groan, but it's not a bad way to spend five bucks during a sale.