Retro Review: Phantasmagoria

By: Kirk Hiner

Somewhere between 1990 and today, somewhere between Red Baron and 3-D Ultra Pinball, my relationship with Sierra went bad. It's partly my fault, as I continued to embrace the Macintosh while Sierra went clubbing with Windows. I could have forgiven this, though, as none of my allegiances seem to be the popular choice (I firmly believe that Sammy Hagar *made* Van Halen, and I find "Lost In Space"--the original TV show, I mean--to be much more entertaining than every incarnation of "Star Trek" piled together...excluding "The Wrath of Khan," of course). Sierra's tragic flaw, however, and the one which I find unforgivable, is that they seem to have forgotten how to tell a good story.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Phantasmagoria.

To start, I'll admit to falling for the hype on this game when it came out in 1995. "Seven CDs? This thing must be huge!" And you can bet that I rallied round the flag when CompUSA refused to carry the game because of its content. I now realize that CompUSA was doing the gaming community a huge favor, even if for the wrong intents and purposes.

There are so many things wrong with Phantasmagoria that I'm not sure where to begin. I guess the first and most obvious disappointment is that it's not scary at all; I got more chills from "Curious George - ABC Adventure." As I was playing the game, I found that my own thoughts were providing the only scary moments in the game, thinking about what could be behind that door or what would jump out from behind those curtains. But nothing was ever behind the door, and no one ever leapt out from behind the curtains. It was always just me and Adrienne (the protagonist whom the player "controls" throughout the game).

So there's my next complaint. I can deal with horror movie heros/heroines who are too stupid to leave the house/cabin/boarding school/VW Microbus while their friends continue to die all around them. If they leave, we have no movie. But horror movie characters at least seem to realize that something is going on. They learn to react. Adrienne...well, she does nothing. She moves from scene to scene as if chairs that rock themselves (where have we seen that before?) and beds that sprout hands are such common fodder to her. At the end, when she's being chased by the demon, I wasn't yelling, "Run! Run!" I was yelling "React! React!"

And speaking of bad characters, "Phantas" has got them covered. There's the sleazy real estate broker whose sole purpose, it seems, is to make Adrienne's deranged, cantankerous husband seem as huggable as Dick Van Dyke. There's the porno-movie-stud of a phone installation guy. There's the mentally handicapped garden boy who gets to fulfill his sole purpose in the game by helping Adrienne push down a tree (oh, sorry for giving away that clue). And there's finally the crazy old man who knows everything that's going on in the house and--oh, thank goodness--how to set it all straight again. Whew! Lucky Adrienne, lucky us.

The only other female character of consequence was the country bumpkin/gypsy woman mother of the gardener. She knew how to read tarot cards. Go figure.

The plot? Don't even get me started. It was contrived, predictable, unoriginal and laden with elements that made no sense. Now I may be nitpicking here, but explain this to me. When Adrienne and her photographer husband/boyfriend/sugar daddy...whatever...move into the mansion, there's no phone. When the technician arrives, where does he install the single phone? The living room? No. The kitchen? Think again. A bedroom or office? Of course not. He puts the thing right inside the front door in the ballroom, the largest room in the house. Now bear in mind, there aren't even any chairs or entryways within 500 pixels of this door (at 640x480 resolution). Ben Johnson couldn't get to this phone in time. Hope Adrienne has *69.

When Phantasmagoria was released, the artwork on the mansion and its surroundings was cutting edge. But this game is living proof that graphics based games don't stand the test of time. Graphics will always improve, so there has to be something more to a game in order for it stay on the shelves for any period of time. Unfortunately, there was nothing in Phantasmagoria to keep it on the shelves even back in 1995.

In fact, the only aspect of this game that deserves a positive nod is the seemless interface. Keyboard-free interaction is pretty much standard these days, but the ladies and gentlemen at Sierra deserve credit for actually blending the interface into the game. After a while, the waving pointer (a skeleton hand) seems to belong in the house...and it gives you something interesting to look at while the rest of the game is bogged down in more mundane dialogue. Sierra has also added a "hintkeeper," which, with a simple click, provides useful tips. My only problem here is that Phantasmagoria is easy enough without online hints. Most other Sierra games seem to be designed specifically to make money off their hint lines, and there we get no help. Funny how that is, don't you think?

This review may seem kind of harsh, and perhaps I wouldn't have been so disappointed in Phantasmagoria if I hadn't been expecting so much going into it. It may have taken seven CDs to store, and it may have cost more to produce than any other computer game in history (at the time of release), but you wouldn't know it to play it.

Luckily, this game was so bad that the sequel never made it to the Mac. I don't see how it could be any worse, but then I didn't see how "Batman and Robin" could be worse than "Batman Forever," and it was. Also, it'd be difficult for anyone to even find a copy of the original Phantasmagoria for sale. So why am I reviewing it? Simple: It's the worst game I've ever played. It's the benchmark against which I rate all that is abysmal, so I just wanted my steady readers to know from where I'm coming.

So I've now left Sierra and found happiness in the arms of AMBER (from Changeling; retro review coming soon). I'll spare you all my years of agony and suggest that you do the same. Perhaps one day Sierra will again focus more on producing a decent product and less on magnitude and hype...and pinball simulations. Yeah, and perhaps one day I'll marry Penny from "Lost in Space." She may be thirty-years older than when she was in the show, but I'll bet my Sammy Hagar record collection that she's aged better than Phantasmagoria.

Genre: Adventure/Horror

Platform: MacOS

Format: CD ROM (seven)

Developer: Sierra

Publisher: Sierra

Requirements: 68040 33MHz (PowerPC 601+ recommended), System 7.1, 8 MB free RAM (16MB recommended), 2X CD-ROM, 256 Colors, 30 MB free hard disk space.

Network feature: No

3Dfx Acceleration: No

Retail price: $29.95

Year Released: 1995

Raised on Intellivision and "Tron," Kirk Hiner has been an avid gamer ever since he was tall enough to look through the viewfinder on the Battlezone upright. Although he makes a living using a PC (not by choice) to design websites for Dynamics Online, Inc., Kirk never strays from his 9600/200 or 3400c for computer gaming. When he's not playing the latest Logicware release, he can either be found working on his next "never to be published" novel, rereading anything by Kurt Vonnegut or watching RAW is WAR.

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October 17, 2013