This is one of the most notorious and controversial titles in the adventure
game genre, and since I frequently like notorious and controversial things, I
was looking forward to playing it.

Phantasmagoria has a fairly old-fashioned
story line about an attractive young couple moving into a big, creepy old house
where strange things begin to happen by tea time on moving day. In stories like
this I always find myself thinking, “Were you comatose when you first
looked at this house and decided to buy it? Hmm … so the dripping blood on the
walls didn’t give you a clue?”

Visually,
the game is attractive but feels very low-quality. There’s lots of pixelation
in the video, and it’s just not done with much smoothness or fluidity. However,
the house is very fun and creepy. Also, I had a surprising amount of technical
trouble, considering the game was only four years old when I played it. I had
a terrible time with the sound and with game crashes as well.

Unfortunately,
the acting is uniformly terrible, and for this there is absolutely no excuse.
Not for a company with the resources of Sierra. Much fun has been made of the
irritation caused by watching Victoria Morsell play with her hair over and over.
It’s a deservedly notorious feature. There is one bright spot in the cast, however,
and Sierra’s casting department gets big brownie points for this one. The sweet
middle-aged proprietor of the antique store is played by none other than 60s sex
kitten Stella Stevens! Always a huge fan of hers, I got a big kick out of seeing
her again.

This
is an extremely trashy game. Not that I don’t like trash upon occasion, but I
have to ask, honestly, is Roberta Williams a grown-up? The story is simplistic,
violent, and exceptionally misogynistic. Hmm … got some issues there, Bobbie?

Also, this has to be the shortest seven-disk game ever made. I couldn’t
believe how quickly I got through it. I would say about 40 minutes per disk. What
gives here?

What makes the game seem even shorter is that most of the time
you’re simply watching long, tedious, badly acted videos. In fact, this is the
first game I’ve ever played where I spent half of the time in an easy chair across
the room, staring stupidly at my computer monitor.

You
could argue that Phantasmagoria isn’t really a game at all. It’s an interactive
movie. Perhaps that should really be a separate genre.

And since it’s an
interactive movie, it’s unforgivable that Sierra was so sloppy on cinematic details.
The best example I can give you is the fact that, even though the story takes
place over about 10 days, the heroine never changes her clothes once. In
other words, even the game’s creators didn’t see her as a real character, but
merely as a cardboard sprite that happened to consist of real life video. But
then, Gabriel never changed clothes in Sierra’s GK2, either. And Curtis
seems to only have one T-shirt in Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh. Grr.
Okay, so maybe this was a programming issue–but I don’t care. Figure it out,
team. If feature films can deal with editing around changes in clothes, you can
too.

I should also mention that there is a built-in hint feature in Phantasmagoria.
This should be a good thing, except I don’t approve of the execution. Hints
are all well and good: but this feature simply doles out spoilers. Hey, Sierra,
look up “hint” in the gamers’ dictionary!

However,
there is one area in which the game excels, and that is the finale. In the final
chapter, the game follows the heroine’s desperate attempts to escape her possessed
husband. Death waits for her at almost every turn. However, the game is structured
in such a way that you immediately get to start over again right at the point
where you made your mistake. There is a certain amount of ghoulish fun to this:
“Oh, darn, she got her head split open again! Okay, let’s try turning at
this door …” The game even allows you to “rewind”
the movie again to retrace your steps so far. In a genre that has very, very few
good endings, I did appreciate the rousing finale of Phantasmagoria.

Okay,
here’s where you lose any shred of respect you may have for me. Despite everything
I’ve said, I enjoyed playing Phantasmagoria. It was fun in a very base,
trashy way. It had an interface that was intuitive and dependable. It’s got some
of those sturdy video virtues that I always enjoy. I guess I’m so critical of
it because I think Sierra and Roberta Williams squandered an opportunity to make
a really fine, groundbreaking, and new type of game and instead went for the low
road. It’s a pity.

I have also reviewed the sequel to this game, Phantasmagoria:
A Puzzle of Flesh, which I actually enjoyed more.

Final
Grade: C-

System Requirements:

PC:

486/33
8 MB RAM
2X CD-ROM
Sound board
DOS

Macintosh:
68040
33 MHz
System 7.1x or higher
8 MB free RAM
2x CD ROM (4x recommended)
256
color
30 MB free hard drive space
Power Mac 601+ requires 16 MB RAM for
Power Mac native mode