Phantasmagoria

I love Sierra adventure games from the 1990s, but it's a sad fact that the company's most popular and best-selling titles were also their worst ones. Case in point: Phantasmagoria, which received a ton of press coverage back in 1995 for its controversial content and sold like hotcakes. In fact, it considerably outsold Sierra's other full-motion video product, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within. That has to be one of gaming's greatest injustices, since Gabriel Knight is superior in every conceivable way. So what's wrong with Phantasmagoria? Let's start with the cliched "married couple moves into a haunted house" plot, which will have you screaming "just get out of there!" at the stupid characters as you would in any B-grade horror movie. Other problems include the game's almost universally bad acting, thin character development, and ugly outdated graphics that have aged much worse than older, simpler games. The production design is also ridiculous; the haunted mansion is a gaudy nightmare of clashing architectural and decorative styles that no sane person would ever consider living in. It's also big enough for an army, let alone a single couple. In defense of the game, I'll admit that it looks big-budget; Sierra blew millions on this silly junk, while keeping Quest for Glory and poor Gabriel on tight budgets (comparatively speaking). Some of the makeup and special effects are pretty good, but they're also quite gross; this is definitively more of a grindhouse horror movie than an arthouse one. Another arguably positive point is that the game has a simple interface and fairly easy-to-solve puzzles. Some reviewers complain about this, but since the game was clearly intended for entry-level players, I think you have to accept its simplicity as part of a deliberate design and not sweat it too much. If only it were any good! I love horror, and I love Sierra, but I don't love this. In fact, Phantasmagoria is tacky enough that I'm slightly sorry it even exists...

Last chapter (7) has an inexplicable behavior, in that it seems to require that one perform certain actions *prior to* beginning a "critical" part of the story. Within that part, one may not restore game from previous saves, but only restart exact scenes in which one dies. The effect is that one may enter those scenes fundamentally unprepared for what happens in them (due to not having adequately prepared by gathering items). So one enters situation in which there can never be a satisfactory result, only death of character. It is the strangest game design aspect I have encountered. I feel that I must be missing something, because no one could reasonably design a game with such a clearly unsatisfactory result. I can only recommend that you skip this game as one which has not a lot of entertainment in chapters 1-6 and then an unacceptable design in the handling of last chapter (7).

Honestly this is not a good game, if you like FMV games you'll be way better off playing something like Gabriel Knight 2 or Wing Commander 3. This games pales in comparison. I'm glad it's a short one though. The acting is not that bad and the overall puzzles and stuff are average, however, the plot is really uninteresting and just boring, the characters have almost no background and it's hard to keep engaged.

Phantasmagoria is ostensibly a horror game, but amusingly very little horror actually happens. It largely boils down to watching our heroine, who wears the same clothes every day and sleeps with her shoes on, wander around the interior of her ponderously gigantic whimsical funhouse of a mansion that makes absolutely no logical sense while her horrible husband slowly becomes more and more evil while working on unplugging a stuck drain. The story supposedly focuses on how they moved into this monstrosity of a building sight unseen and knowing nothing about it, only for Adrien (our heroine) to use a letter opener to chisel a hole in the back of a fireplace to discover the hidden Satanic church in her house and unwittingly unleash a demonic spirit that had possessed the mansion's former owner and now decides to possess her husband Don. However, most of the play time is dedicated to such things as inviting an elderly hobo and her mentally challenged gorilla of a son to live with her forever, introducing herself to an antiques dealer a dozen times in the same conversation, and fetching drain cleaner for her asshole of a husband. The actual "horror" aspects are way, way funnier than they are sinister. The opening cinematic features Adrien dreaming about early 90s CG magician's props and a chimney full of hooks, but the scene immediately following it where she has sex with Don is far more horrific. Goofy hands grope her from inside her mattress, a teddy bear's head falls off as she discovers a cartoon fart cloud hovering above a crib, and a drifter throws up the gelatinous head of a dead magician. The only value this game really has is laughing at how ridiculous it all is. It's FMV cheese from that era where 8 CDs of game automatically meant better even if nobody involved knew how to write, act, or design logical puzzles. Don is a hilariously pathetic monster, the hobos are comically terrible, and the real estate agent and his pal Wallfish are the best of them all.

I bought this game in a massive CD pack in 1999 from a computer show for $10. Who is actually believing they can ask this money in 2019?