Posted February 12, 2010
Phantasmagoria is a game that shall forever remain imbued in my memory. No, not because it is a stellar game and a timeless classic from days gone by, but because it's a game that is so bad that I can't help but look back on it and chuckle. It's also a perfect example of exactly what was wrong with the whole full motion adventure movement of the 90s.
The game was originally released on a whopping 7 CDs, each of which represented a day in the life of Adrienne Delaney and her wacky adventures living in a haunted mansion previously owned by a crazy magician. Now, judging by the amount of physical media originally required to play the game, one would assume that you'd at least get a pretty lengthy adventure to immerse yourself in, right? Well, that's where I was dead wrong. Each disc takes about 15-20 minutes to get through (some even less), and the whole game can be beaten in under two hours your first time around (and even shorter if you decide you want to play through it all again). I can only begin to guess why this must be, but something tells me it has a little something to do with the fact that a lot of the animation sequences are repeated across each disc. And let me tell you, there are a lot of extremely redundant sequences throughout the game, such as countless views of Adrienne adjusting her hair in a mirror, or just blankly staring at--I mean, "examining"--objects in the game.
But hey, at least the game can be saved by an interesting story and decent acting, right? Oh, but drats, they couldn't even get that right. What you end up with is little more than a vulgar display of violence, which leaves me feeling like they were trying to stir up controversy just for the sake of stirring up controversy. This game and its sequel (A Puzzle of Flesh) are, to me, abominations of the adventure game genre. So why didn't I rate the game any lower? Well, to be fair, there were some bits in the game that were actually so bad that they were amusing. So I guess if you're looking for a game that's "so bad it's good", this game might not be such a bad choice after all.
The game was originally released on a whopping 7 CDs, each of which represented a day in the life of Adrienne Delaney and her wacky adventures living in a haunted mansion previously owned by a crazy magician. Now, judging by the amount of physical media originally required to play the game, one would assume that you'd at least get a pretty lengthy adventure to immerse yourself in, right? Well, that's where I was dead wrong. Each disc takes about 15-20 minutes to get through (some even less), and the whole game can be beaten in under two hours your first time around (and even shorter if you decide you want to play through it all again). I can only begin to guess why this must be, but something tells me it has a little something to do with the fact that a lot of the animation sequences are repeated across each disc. And let me tell you, there are a lot of extremely redundant sequences throughout the game, such as countless views of Adrienne adjusting her hair in a mirror, or just blankly staring at--I mean, "examining"--objects in the game.
But hey, at least the game can be saved by an interesting story and decent acting, right? Oh, but drats, they couldn't even get that right. What you end up with is little more than a vulgar display of violence, which leaves me feeling like they were trying to stir up controversy just for the sake of stirring up controversy. This game and its sequel (A Puzzle of Flesh) are, to me, abominations of the adventure game genre. So why didn't I rate the game any lower? Well, to be fair, there were some bits in the game that were actually so bad that they were amusing. So I guess if you're looking for a game that's "so bad it's good", this game might not be such a bad choice after all.