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Excellent Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: November 16, 1999
Author: Amazon User

I found these games highly impressive and exciting. They were well written and created. I will never tire of playing these games they ultimately captivated me. If you are a person, who likes adventures and mysteries and If you like to snoop for things, then this is the game for you! Well worth the price!

Scary!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: July 05, 2001
Author: Amazon User

These are some Roberta Williams Sierra games, and this lady knows how the scare the crap out of people. My favorite was the first phantasmagoria game of the two part series. This one takes place in this creepy old house that Adrienne (the character you play) and her husband just moved into. Well Adrienne kind of inadvertantly lets lose this evil demonic force while exploring the house and all heck breaks loose. The visuals of this game are excellent for a 1995 game, the game has lots of video segments and the characters look real (I actually prefer this kind of game play over the more modern 3-D stuff). The interface is good and the plot line is fabulous the story goes into the whole history of the house and even into the surrounding town. Some of the scenes are way disturbing though including flashback murders and a rape scene, but the most disturbing scene is the realistic final scenes at the end of the game that happen if you (Adrienne) lose and she is killed in various horrible ways, this happened to me quite a few times and that night I had to watch cartoons for hours before I would even think about turning off the lights to go to sleep. But this is a horror game and it does it's job it will give you goosebumps, make you scream, and freak you out. I really liked it, because it scared me. The second game Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh, is good but it's not the award winning game the first was. This one follows Curtis through a dark, bizare, and mind-bending tale. This game gave me the creeps, even more so then Phantasmagoria I did, but this game was for my taste too dark and surreal. In the first game it was easy to identify with Adrienne she was the heroine, but its hard to tell if Curtis is hero or villian or both. Curtis even though he is the character I played creeped me out, there is just something about him, and of course you'll find out what in the end, but it makes it hard to identify with him. The gameplay in this game also does the real life (television quality) visuals. Other pluses are the easy to use interface, interesting characters, and well laid plot. Worth the play but too creepy to be as fun as the first phantasmagoria in the set.

"Phantasmagoria" and "Phantasmagoria: Puzzle of Flesh"

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

"Phantasmagoria" was the first CD-Rom game I ever played and it and I can still remember being stuck on a disc for a couple of days while the skull kept telling me to "Find Don! Give him what he needs!" I was pretty sure I had the drain cleaner Don needed, but I could not remember what room of the house he was in. "Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh" is not quite as good, but that is not a big knock against the sequel, although I have never bothered to find out while Roberta Williams, who designed and wrote the original, was not responsible for the "sequel."

"Phantasmagoria Stagefright" gives you both of these story-based adventure games, where you solve puzzles and overcome obstacles. I eagerly admit that these are my favorite type of comptuer games, where you collect not only information from the locals in town but various objects waiting for the right moment when a nail allows you to do something important. The games allow you to exclude access to explicit scenes, of which there are a few. I have not played a lot of these games, but the end game of "Phantasmagoria" is still my favorite, mainly because of the delicious twist Williams comes up with for how you have to put yourself in position to win the game (I can say no more).

I am sure technology has made quantum leaps in these games since this pair first came out, but they are still a pair of solid games.

Trashy - but very enjoyable

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

These are two rather [weak] but very enjoyable games - here is a review of each one.

Phantasmagoria is a rather basic interactive movie/graphic adventure in which you play Adrienne Delaney who moves into an old mansion estate with her husband Don Gordon. She then learns of the estates twisted past and Don becomes increasingly abusive toward her.

The interface is basic - you click around the screen, examining objects, which may be put into your inventory to use later by clicking on them in your inventory which makes the object your cursor to use etc.

The graphics are live action actors on a 3d background, are mostly quite grainy but not bad for 1995.

The soundtrack is amazing, some fabulous orchestral scores. Fantastic.

The game is very graphically violent, but there is a censorship option.
The first three chapters leaves you wondering why the game is rated Mature however the next three chapters your questions are answered as everything Adrienne researched in the latter chapters is now seen. Some scenes in the game are truly [strange] and disturbing and by the last chapter you start feeling very nauseated, especially if you do it the hard way.

The only annoying things about Phantasmagoria are that it's to short and easy. The first time you play, you can finish it in six to eight hours, but it's worth playing again because there are plenty of movie scenes and a few "Easter eggs" you can miss the first time round. The second time you play if you know exactly what your doing and view everything there is to see you can finish it in four hours fifteen minutes.

Overall great game deserves its mature rating - recommended.

Phantasmagoria: A puzzle of flesh is also a rather basic interactive movie/graphic adventure in which you play ex-mental patient Curtis Craig who's been out of the mental hospital for exactly one year; he now has a good job and a great girlfriend.
However now he begins to have hallucinations, first an invisible hand punches him at his desk and his rat begins to talk to him. Then one of his co-workers is brutally murdered and all evidence points to him. Playing as Curtis you must set out to prove his innocence and unravel the mysteries of the company you work for.
Meanwhile you're cheating on your girlfriend with hot S&M babe Therese. Sounds [weak]- it is, but it is also very enjoyable, however not so much as the original because it's not as scary.

The interface is pretty basic. You click on highlighted hot spots, which will more often than not trigger a movie sequence. You can collect objects and click on them, which will then make the object, become your cursor, which enables you to use them in the game environment, examine with the eye icon, etc, etc.

The puzzles are also pretty basic, apart from a few password cracking puzzles which are mainly difficult because you don't know when you're supposed to crack each one within the game.

The graphics are your usual pixelated movie sequences and unmoving back grounds however in high colour it's better quality than most games of its type.

The game like the original is very graphically violent however there is a censorship option, which will cut four of the most violent scenes and three of the [physical ones].

As I said this isn't as scary as the original but there are a few jumpy moments, a disturbing mental hospital scene and a gory, disturbing murder scene, which I found scary.

There is a fair bit of replay value mainly for the sheer heck of it because it was so enjoyable the first time but also because there is a whole "Easter egg" system in which you can click around "unclickable" places etc to trigger funny movies and weird things like Curtis picking his nose which is a laugh, you can also get scored on the Easter eggs you find. However unlike the original you will see almost everything the first time you play.

It can be finished for the first time in about eight to ten hours - a bit more if your really bad at puzzle solving. The second time you play, if you know exactly what your doing it can be finished in approximately five hours so it is a slight improvement on length than the original even though its only on five CD's while the original was seven. If you want to find all the "Easter eggs" however it could take you forever - you will need a guide.

There is also a fair bit of humour in this one, mostly coming from Curtis' mate Trevor, who cracked me up. There was a lot of great one liners and jokes coming from him which was refreshing because in the original there was next to no humour at all.

Overall despite the bad ratings this game got I found it to be very enjoyable and am sad to say I have replayed it several times, but it definitely deserves its mature rating!

To sum up two great genuinely scary games which you'll want to play again and again.

The scariest game I have ever played...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game (Phantasmagoria) scared ... me the first time I played it. It is one of the richest games I have ever played, with elaborate, beautifully rendered settings, an intriguing story, horrific movie clips that play out in front of you like a horror movie, and an excellent score that will send chills down your spine. It is not so much a strategy game, but rather a slow adventure game (the "slow" being a positive quality, for you become immersed in the creepy atmosphere of it all). It has an awesome chase-scene ending that takes you all over the sprawling mansion and into the bowels of the mansion- you find your knowledge of the house which had served as your background on the past 6 discs being put to the test as you flee your attacker- perhaps one of the best- and scariest- game endings ever. If you are intrigued by all of the things I just mentioned, don't hesitate, BUY IT, YOU WILL LOVE IT. (This test refers to the out-of-print "Phantasmagoria".)

Doesn't live up to its expectations...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: June 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I am a huge fan of Roberta Williams, her King's Quest games have offered me hours of entertainment since I was about 9 years old. When I heard that she was taking on a more "adult" project featuring real actors and a gripping, horror-based storyline, I was more than excited. However, I received nothing but disappointment.

The graphics in this game are most impressive (considering the time that the game was created). They feature real actors who are placed in front of a blue screen with a cartoon-ish backround and props projected behind them. This gives the game a fairly realistic effect although at times the actors look so out of place in front of their backrounds that the occuring event is everything but real.

As far as the acting goes..it's about what you'd expect from a game which resembles a B horror movie. Most of the acting is barely believeable (although Adrienne, the main character, is not horrible) and the characters themselves are most annoying.

The story was just awful...cliched and robbed to the core, I found absolutely everything in this game to be entirely predictable. It focuses around a couple, Don and Adrienne, who move into a huge, spooky house on an island. The house was owned by a creepy count named Carno and it is said to be haunted. All of the islanders are afraid of the house and none of them are too keen on talking about it (with the exception of one eager old woman who serves as the "revelation of the evil within" source seen in all movies of this sort). The story proceeds just as you would predict. Without giving anything away I'll just tell you that Adrienne discovers ghosts, secret rooms, and a demon which has been wreaking havoc on the house for years. It borrows heavily from Stephen King's "The Shining" (as in..the house turns the husband into a raving psychopath). For anyone who is not too familiar with the horror genre, Phantasmagoria may provide a few hours of good story. To fans of classic horror movies and games, Phantasmagoria will become stale before the end of chapter three.

This brings me to the gameplay. The game itself is divided into 7 chapters (each chapter contained entirely on its respective disk). While this may seem as though it allows for a massive game, it must be said that each chapter can be completed in a quick half hour, even by the most inexperienced of adventure gamers. The puzzles that each chapter requires you to solve are completely lacking in challenge. They are solved by the use of obvious items in Adrienne's inventory and no logical thought is necessary. There was actually a chapter in the game which focused entirely on buying a bottle of Dran-O from the village general store and returning it to your husband. Yes - that's it. Later - a puzzle comes up where the very item you need can be found a single screen below and it is not hidden in the very least.

To fans of blood and gore - this game may serve as an enjoyable "shockfest". There is more than one moment of senseless violence which is not limited to beheading, faces being ripped open, and the funneling of human body parts down a woman's throat. For those too squeamish to even imagine such things, the gore can easily be censored with an in-game option requiring the entry of a password (to protect the little ones' virgin eyes).

Overall, Phantasmagoria lacks in every area required to make an adventure game reach "classic" status. The story is predictable, the gameplay simple and stale, and the characters annoying. For huge fans of senseless violence and B-movie horror plots, this may serve as some sort of "cult classic" piece. All others, don't waste your money.

Excelente mistery game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 15, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Phantasmagoria 1 is a very challenging game where you have to be smart,its images are really good.Phantasmagoria 2 story is not so good as the first one but it is also a very good game.the video in both of them is really impressive

Phantasmagoria rocks!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

don't listen to anyone that says otherwise: Phantasmagoria is the best! I've never played Phantasmagoria 2, but the first one is one of the best games ever. it has a great plot, awesome music, and graphics better than that of most newer games. If you ever find it for sale (it is out of print) BUY PHANTASMAGORIA!!!!

Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 15
Date: November 11, 1999
Author: Amazon User

I expected more from the master Roberta Williams. Phantasmagoria was a disappointing exercise, a boring game limited rather than helped by its FMV graphics. The game actually began pretty well, but the introduction of two useless and annoying characters in the middle of the story, and a lack of interesting game play twists killed all interest I had. Only one chapter through the sequel, Puzzle of Flesh, and I was bored out of my mind. The characters were not believable, and the plot dull and lifeless.

Phantasmagoria

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: June 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I don't understand why some people dislike Phantasmagoria 1, I mean it must be the best computer game i've ever played! I didn't like nr 2 as much as nr. 1, because the story behind nr. 1 is just... fanastic. I love the characters, the house, the story... everything! Roberta Williams did a really good job on Phantasmagoria, she should be proud.... Buy it, rent it, or borrow it today, you'll not regret it!

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