Tenebris Play Reviews: Phantasmagoria - Why did I think this was a good idea...

This review pertains to the PC version I got from GOG.com. It hasn't changed since the 1995 release. More's the pity...

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. I have an almost constant hankering for old school point and click games, Skeleton Warriors re-runs, Gargoyles (where are you final Season?) and Findus Crispy Pancakes.

Whilst so much of what we liked still holds up (Skeleton Warriors does, so there), there's a fair bit that doesn't and one of the most egregious examples of this is 'Phantasmagoria', a PC point and click puzzle game from 1995. The 90's were a heady time for videogames. Consoles had finally started gaining footholds in peoples' homes, PCs had started to focus on making more complex games with a better variety of genres and we'd just gotten over the idea that floppy disks and cartridges were going to be replaced with CDs.

The move to CD came with a major jump in the size and scope of games as developers found they now had crazy amounts of space and tried every bizarre idea that crossed their deviant minds to try and fill it. It was a great time.

An awful time, but a great time.

Kind of like today's game up for a retro-review, which is a prime example of a wonderful, terrible idea - FMV point and click games. Phantasmagoria was the baby of Roberta Williams, joint CEO of Sierra during its 'bland' phase which was most of its existence, although that accusation cannot really be levelled at this game. Roberta generally worked on the Kings Quest series of games, where an unlikable prat gets murdered repeatedly for walking on the wrong bit of grass because the games logic works about as well as asking your toddler to drive you home because he isn't as drunk as you are. There's some logic, but nothing groundbreaking. This was brought over to this new horror-themed franchise. Robertas' logic isn't the same as human logic.

To be fair, which I have to be, the ideas that are part of Phantasmagoria are reasonably solid. It's just a shame that so many of them are massively underdeveloped and poorly represented in attempts to garner attention.

Here are some point and click puzzles. Shame they are easy to the point of being boring, something that was repeatedly brought up by the gaming press of the time. This is the easiest point and click adventure game I have ever played. I once reviewed a Disney point and click and it's puzzles were more challenging and more rewarding than these. Put item into item, put key in door level of simple. It doesn't feel like you're even truly playing the game or getting anywhere in the story as they are so painfully easy and so little feedback that they've progressed is given to the player. You might get an uncomfortable, poorly acted FMV if you're lucky. Get some duct tape and attach a couple of magnifying glasses to your eyes so you can see it.

Here is a story that is reminiscent of Stephen Kings "The Shining". By reminiscent I mean that it's an almost straight rip-off, pretty shameless considering that Phantasmagoria was touted as having more lines than the average novel and Roberta used it as an example of her novelist credentials for years afterward.

Here is the story in a nutshell (skip if you hate spoilers): Two people move into a haunted mansion. One gets possessed and turns evil. Then there's a rape scene meant to show how irredeemable the possessed person is, where as all the other stuff they were doing wouldn't have pushed the story along at all (rolls eyes), then everything gets stopped and made better using the power of puzzle solving and asking nicely for help. No, I am not kidding.

So mean!

Basically, the story aspect is really weak. "The Shining" works as a novel because time is given over to character development and their progression is slow. It helps that they are isolated as it forces the character to deal with what is happening. There were multiple points in Phantasmagoria that I found myself wondering why the player character didn't just leave. It's an option that is constantly there - she has legs, she has a car - but no. If I'm wondering why your character hasn't just left or called the police then your game probably isn't going to get a good write-up. As it's so poorly written and pieced together the acting ends up being truly atrocious in some instances and just dull everywhere else. If it weren't for the furore over the sex and gore, I don't think it would have sold well at all.

So, if the story is inane and poorly executed, the puzzles are insultingly simple and the acting makes me want to rend my eyes and ears so I don't have to see or hear it, are there any good things I can say about Phantasmagoria?

Actually, quite a few. The music is the stand-out for me, it is incredible. Excellent haunting melodies and voices, subtlety when the scene demands it and reaching, bombastic tones where needed. It is the best thing about the whole production and elevates the game, giving it a chilling, dread-filled atmosphere - and the game is nicely atmospheric when you're wandering from scene to scene.

Whilst I've lambasted the acting and writing there are some good things to it - a couple of performances are really good and the actors deserve recognition for the huge amount of work they put in to make the characters look like they are interacting with the environment, something which required hundreds of shots.

Leading on from that, the characters were rotascoped from actors, making them digitised a la Mortal Kombat. the backgrounds are not, these are hand-drawn in painstaking detail which is really rather impressive but does create a disconnect between the background and the look of the person interacting with it.

If a creepy atmosphere and hand drawn environments are enough to make a game for you, then you might enjoy this. I, however, couldn't uninstall it fast enough, but I prefer good story, good characterisation and interesting puzzles with a difficulty curve.

One other thing - Phantasmagoria got wrapped up in it's own hype but it was by no means the only game that had sex and gore in it. The 7th Guest was waaaaaayyyyy better and it had some gore and sex too. This was pretty standard for the time so the petticoat wringing for this one was really stupid. Phantasmagoria became an example of how evil videogames were and helped to cement that image in the medias mind. Cheers for that. Could have at least picked a game that was good, rather than mediocre.

Phantasmagoria sold gang-busters when it was released, almost entirely because of the way Sierra itself drew attention to the rape scene, sex scene in the trailer and the copious gore. Looking at it now, it's a bit twee, especially as we've all seen so much worse in everyday soapoperas, manga or German Scat Porn. At the time it was a big thing. There were BOOBS on show! And the people writhe around on top of each other to look like they're having sex. It gets much more hardcore if you turn the censor option on, purely because your imagination fills in the blanks. Seriously, this is similar to David Cage and his attempts to make a couple of polygon figures bump uglies as if it were sexy. Like a lot of old games that are partially-remembered, Phantasmagoria has seen more positive reviews of late. I have no idea why. It was poor then, it's poor now and it's good points may only damn it further as the rest of the game is so damn boring and weak.

I don't do numbered scores but the original paddling it got on release was fair, marking it as average at around 2.5/3 stars.