Reaching my crunched-up arm way, way, waaaaaay back into the dusty,
cobwebby, gollum-infested nether regions of the El Obscuro file, this week I came
up with Return of the Phantom, a little slip of a game from Microprose.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s disturbingly successful 1986 musical The Phantom
of the Opera created a virtual cult for the character of the Opera Ghost,
capitalizing on the “romantic” connotations many associated with the
masked, mutilated composer in an even more successful way than the 1977 Broadway
revival of Dracula (starring Frank Langella and the incredible design of
Edward Gorey) did with its bloodthirsty title character. I suppose it was
inevitable that there would be a computer game based on the Phantom.

ROTP
is a 1995 DOS third-person game that begins in the present day in the Opera
in Paris. It seems that the Opera management has decided to finally mount a full
production of the Opera Ghost’s sole work, “Don Juan Triumphant.” As
if this wasn’t strange enough, everywhere you look there are echoes of the disastrous
run-in with the Phantom in the 1880s–the star of the opera seems to be related
to Christine Daae, the young ingénue with which the Masked One was infatuated,
and worst of all, during the performance the infamous chandelier comes crashing
down (quelle horreur!), killing several audience members.

Your character
is the police detective who comes in to try to solve the mystery. Your character
is also (quelle surprise!) a descendent of the man Christine Daae was in
love with during all that nasty Phantom business.

The entire game takes
place in (and under) the Opera, and I do admire that unity of place. And it’s
kind of fun skulking around the various areas of the theater and interviewing
the stage manager, the ingénue, the manager, and others.

Early on
in the story, your character gets hit on the head, and faster than you can ask,
“Is Michael Crawford the Antichrist?” your character is whisked back
in time and plopped right back in the middle of the original Phantom story.

Okay,
predictable, but not a terrible premise by any means.

However, there’s not
a lot more to this game that’s fun. First of all, the graphics and overall game
design are strictly pedestrian. The theater doesn’t live and breathe, it seems
oversimplified, and it feels like a sixth-grade art student’s idea of a theater.
Worse, the graphics have a decidedly creaky look for a game released in 1995–it
looks a lot more like 1992 to me.

Also, the interface is awful. In a DOS
game like this, where you’re dodging pixels the size of Twister mats, it’s extremely
important to have a smart cursor–in other words, one that lets you know you’re
over an object that can be examined, picked up, etc. Without such a feature, it’s
difficult to move through the world of ROTP with any confidence. Quelle
drag.

Next, the voice acting is very peculiar. It’s not good, but it
features some of the best diction I’ve ever heard in a game. The overall effect
is like a very careful group of school teachers are scrupulously reading the lines
from a book. Quelle strange.

However, by far the worst offense committed
by this game appears as soon as you make it down into the sewers beneath the Opera
on your hunt for the Phantom. Yes, you’ve guessed it, Mesdames et Messieurs,
it’s a huge, boring (drum roll, s’il vous plaît), maze.

I
know, I know, we’ve all been irritated with mazes on many an occasion. Some gamers
hate any and all mazes. I’m actually not in that camp. I’m not overly fond of
them, but I have come across a few in my gaming days that have actually been creative
and fun. My general maze rule is this: A Game Has to Earn its Maze. It’s sort
of like earning a huge soliloquy in a play. The proceedings have to have enough
weight to justify it.

Examples? The sewers in Traitors Gate. The
cellar maze in Alone in the Dark. The clever 3D Mayan maze in Sanitarium.

However.
Return of the Phantom is a short, slight game and in no way does it
justify the very long, very boring, very pointless maze that you have to muddle
your way through before having your confrontation with the Phantom. Nope, no way,
no how.

As I said, the idea of sneaking around a theater is not a bad one,
but it’s just not implemented very interestingly here. While playing, I kept thinking
about how much more fun it was to sneak around in the deserted theater in Are
You Afraid of the Dark?

I finished this game (with help on the maze,
sue me) in just a few hours. It was reasonably fun, but I would only recommend
it to die-hard OCD adventure completists … like me.

Final Grade: C-

If
you liked Return of the Phantom:
Watch: The Phantom of the Opera
(on stage)
Read: The Fan by Bob Randall
Play: Are
You Afraid of the Dark?