Roberta Williams actually considers this her best game. And I disagree with her. While it does have its charm, it probably helped cement the view that FMV games were campy, poorly acted and mostly just bad games (and let's be frank, most FMV games are campy, poorly acted and mostly just bad, with a few notable exceptions, including Sierra's own Gabriel Knight 2).
I think this game took a lot more work on Williams' part than most of her other games, but I agree, it's not her best. GK2 is much better both in acting and gameplay.
Thank you, but what is GK2...I know, I'm a nerd, not the "geek" I claim to be...I know I could easily look up GK2...but I'm way too tired...I'll get on that. :)
OUCH, ok my bad...I did a search on "GK2"...now I need to use my FixMe Stick...don't do random web searches...not safe...nothing is safe...at least it wasn't ransomware :)...but my eyes can't unsee what I saw :P (Yes, I'm messing with you, but I don't know what GK2 is...but searching anything on the net these days requires a shot of penicillin :) )
I think the most CDs I ever had to deal with in the 90s was 6 for Pandora Directive. And my discs 5 and 6 always had a tendency to not work, so I ended up getting multiples of those discs from Access.
@@Cannotbetamed1 haha but dont you remember Indiann jones and the fate of Atlantis that run great on a 386 with 2meg ram and pc speaker that was early 1993 and needed 10 floppy disks i think, my poor computer had a 85 meg hard drive then and that was considerd average
This game was the best ever for its time imo. It took more patience to play but it was evolutionary using full video as game play. The mix of humor and suspense kept a good balance for genuine fright and scares and comic relief. I'd rate this game 4 uncooked acorns out of 5.
(Congratulations on 5000+!) Your intro to this game was a lot more interesting than the game's actual content it seems! Ah yes, FMV, we remember it well, if not fondly. Not sorry I didn't play this the first time around. Thanks for playing it so we don't have to.
This was one of the first adventure games I played on my first windows 98 PC in 1998. I feel so old. The other was Gabriel knight 2, which is still to this day a favorite.
This game was actually Sierra's biggst selling game ever next to Half-Life. When it was released in August 1995, it sold 1 million copies within the first month (which was a lot for 1995). The next year, however, Sierra was sold to CUC International, and Bob Davidson, co-founder of Davidson & Associates (an educational software company) was put in charge of the combined company (CUC Software). Because Davidson and Sierra now shared a combined sales force (Davidson's sales force, not Sierra's) and Davidson's sales force was used to selling games to educators and even schools, Davidson's people couldn't justify selling this type of utterly graphic game to retailers, so support for Phantasmagoria was severely cut and it became harder to find at market, dramatically undermining sales. The problem was that Bob Davidson treated Sierra as a Davidson studio, rather than treating them as an independent subsidiary like Davidson had done with Blizzard (Davidson bought Blizzard back in 1994). The Davidsons left CUC in January 1997 but by then the damage was already done to Sierra's ability to sell their games, and a lot of Davidson people still ran the product development and marketing at CUC/Cendant Software anyway.
I was soooo happy when I saw you bring up Tex Murphy at 5:05 The Tex Murphy series is my all time favorite! Played through the whole series again last year and it held up well. :D
I remember when I was 18 years old 24 / 7 playing the pc version of the land of the dead road to fiddlers green on my acer windows xp gaming desktop pc 24 / 7 when I was 18 years old 24 / 7!
My parents at the time, got me this game when I was like 15. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to get the sequel. I was at the computer gaming store with my mom and asked one of the clerks if the game was any good. He looked at my 16 year old self, looked at my mom, looked at the game(filled with gratuitous S&M sex scenes) , then back at me and said, "Yeeah.. i heard it wasn't as good as the first one" Cut to 25 years later me finally buying it on GOG. I was like of course LOL!
I actually enjoyed phantasmagoria, but you have valid points on the long animations/ lack of commentary by the main character. The sequel is decent, but as far as point and click horror, I prefer shivers 1 and shivers 2.
Great job, Pam. Man, what a tedious game. these FMV games certainly had their place in history but they seem so hard to go back to. I think it's cool though that they hold a special place in your heart.
You are right on the money here. I played this when it first came out and was like, are you kidding me? This is a landmark achievement? Sierra had been biting off more than it could chew in the technological front. It was one of the first studios that abandoned DOS in favor of Windows, which turned out to be a couple of years too early. They spent all this money for the CGI and movie sets, and all that money showed up only in those incredibly pixellated FMV scenes. The technology at the time was just not up to par. If they had today's technology it would be different. But nowadays no one would spend that kind of money on an adventure game.
My problem wasn't so much that the technology was bad... they just relied on it way too much. Like they thought people would be so impressed by the image of a real actor in the game that they didn't give that actor anything interesting to say or do for most of it.
@@Cannotbetamed1 Contemporary reviews were mostly positive, since the tech was deemed impressive at the time (but not by me, as I mentioned). You can see a 1995 review by Canadian female author Arinn Dembo at the cgwmuseum dot org website. Go to the Galleries section and download the Nov 1995 issue of Computer Gaming World, which was the leading gaming publication at the time. Dembo gave it a positive review, and mentioned some interesting gender issues as well.
Hey pam have you played this new game called the bunker? if so what do you think about it? its like your modern day point and click game which i think you might like.
You should definitely play it pam! I dont want to spoil anything but basically its a real time point and click in what it feels like a Fallout scenario, Its really good i just beaten it last night.
That scene struggling with the lock......ha. There's such a harsh reset when actions are completed. "Put arms at sides, and stare blankly off in some random direction." It's like Adrian is a robot waiting for her next command. I realize it's a result of tech limitations, because she had to be posed in SOME static way when awaiting for player input. Also, I want to know more about the real estate agent.
Thank you for covering this game. And it was interesting and good to know what happened to some of the actors careers. This game was pretty hyped up when it was released due to the multiple CD-ROMs back then. It was a 'novelty'.
So much nostalgia even though I never owned it. I remember I used to buy my PC games from SAMs club back during the time of this, KQ7, and Myst. This always stuck out at me due to the beautiful box art. Nice!!
Great review, Pam! I remember going over to a friend's house when this came out and being super bored, but then loving the gruesome death scenes... hey, I was a teen...
I was actually pretty excited about the recent rerelease the game had, even if it is horrible. On another related note, I've never seen your channel before and for some reason YT kept recommending your videos today so I finally gave in and watched a few. Good stuff, best of luck with it.
While I enjoyed the game (in a guilty pleasure way) , I found your criticisms spot on, there was a lot of padding and I was surprised that Roberta Williams said she thought it was her best game
I'm about 5 years late to this party, but .... Great review! I enjoyed it. I can't be the first person to ask this, but have you tried Phantasmagoria 2? I never played it, but I've seen the longplay. Gameplay still looked pretty stale, but the story was honestly quite riveting in my opinion. Very different with genuinely unexpected and satisfying twists. If you decide to make another retro adventure game review, give it a thought.
@@Cannotbetamed1the apocalypse song that plays near the trailer changed my life . I played the game when it was release , and i still have it stuck in my head every once an then . Ma mamas face. . Has dripped down to the dirt ... haha thanks i hope to see this
At the time this came out, the graphics were so cool and new, it was less annoying to watch the animations. The expectation of fast gameplay, especially in this genre, was less than it was now.
I just played through Little Misfortune, which had a location named Phantasmagoria. I wonder if it's a deliberate reference, seems likely since Killmonday also makes point-and-click adventures.
Hello! Does anyone know the layout of the second floor relative to the first? And as the staircase is adjacent to the second floor. The idea is very good, but I think that in this case it is not possible, a spiral staircase goes like nowhere. Where is located the second floor, and how he is there? It is not clear. But I'd really like to know.
I though it was an enjoyable game when I played it last year. I didn't mind the noodling around in it as much because overall it was a pretty short game (like 2 to 3 hours if I am remembering right?)
Say, Phantasmagoria! Nice review, I concur with your critique. And the 20 CDs it took to play it! The humanity! Still, the campy horror and watermelon stunt-doubles wig me out on a primal level. Shouldn't have watched my big bro play this when I was, like, 7 or something. Yeow.
One of the behind the scenes interviews with Ridley Scott on Alien, he mentioned something like gore doesn't create horror, it creates disgust. And as much as I see the usefulness of gore in horror stuff, yeah this game looks more gross and not really that scary. Entertaining review however and am happy to now be backing you on Patreon. :) -Mad Wolf
First, thank you so much! Second, I agree. When I first saw the gory scenes here I just felt kinda sick, not scared. And they're so tonally different than everything else in the game.
Nice review, recently played phantasmagoria or as i called it the never ending tale of pancake butt. it was def hit or miss but was ok. and wasnt a bad game to stream. also least i didnt get 'totally' stuck which sometimes happens to me in PAC games. Ever play toon struck?
I hated when you could get really stuck in a game. I remember it happening in Leisure Suit Larry... 3 I think? I forgot to pick something up on an airplane then got a message at the end of the game saying I couldn't complete it. So annoying. I have not played Toon Struck.
well i got stuck in toon struck.however i do recommend it for what it is. i really try not to go to guides as long as possible with P&C games. For me phantasmagoria was more cryptic at the end when u could actually die but the dumbest thing (that i got stuck on) was i didnt know there was another part to the store so i was missing the dog bone forever! talk about feeling dumb XD... keep up the good work pam!!
I found (when I played this in 1995 at the age of 13) that the end chase sequence made up for the slow ponderous build up and tonal weirdness - what did you think of it? The weird thing is, the chase is *so* much better the less you prepare before going into the darkroom - if you don't get the items you need (the crucifix, the snowman, etc.) Don will chase you to every corner of the house as you collect them, while testing how well you memorized the layout, and finding ways hurt Don for a couple of moments. I get the impulse to reward the player for being thorough, but really some solid action at that point seems a much better reward! This really stood out in my mind as one of stand out gaming experiences to my young impressionable mind. If you grabbed the book right after macing Don with drain cleaner, then I highly recommend playing it again.
@@Cannotbetamed1 try find them. Btw I remember the hype for Phantasmagoria even before Internet, I got few info by the Sierra BBS, but like you said was a bump. It came in 6 or 7 cds back in the day.
I remember feeling a little confused about the characters and tone, but for some reason loved this game at the time as I didn't know what I was getting myself into at the time. The graphic scenes are pretty cool though but the rape scene was just awkward. I remember playing this with my dad on our first PC as we picked the Mature 18+ option xD Adrian kinda annoyed me and she was so prim and proper but as you say, completely oblivious despite seeing all that crap! I still have fond memories though. Great review! I love your voice hehe Thanks for the video!
Cannot be Tamed Yeah me too! Since I've only recently found your channel I haven't had a chance to look through all your reviews and I would assume you've already done 7th Guest and/or 11th Hour?
Good honest review. In my opinion games like these you cannot really recommend playing based on experience, and it is your curiosity that plays the biggest part here. Similar to some movies. You may know (without spoilers) that they are not that good, but somehow you need to satiate that curiosity and play the game (or watch the movie). This was the case for me with this game. Overall an interesting experience that would not "unplay" :)
Roberta Williams actually considers this her best game.
And I disagree with her. While it does have its charm, it probably helped cement the view that FMV games were campy, poorly acted and mostly just bad games (and let's be frank, most FMV games are campy, poorly acted and mostly just bad, with a few notable exceptions, including Sierra's own Gabriel Knight 2).
I think this game took a lot more work on Williams' part than most of her other games, but I agree, it's not her best. GK2 is much better both in acting and gameplay.
Thank you, but what is GK2...I know, I'm a nerd, not the "geek" I claim to be...I know I could easily look up GK2...but I'm way too tired...I'll get on that. :)
OUCH, ok my bad...I did a search on "GK2"...now I need to use my FixMe Stick...don't do random web searches...not safe...nothing is safe...at least it wasn't ransomware :)...but my eyes can't unsee what I saw :P (Yes, I'm messing with you, but I don't know what GK2 is...but searching anything on the net these days requires a shot of penicillin :) )
Gabriel Knight 2.
Also, I dunno what your search history is like but searching for GK2 returned a region in India and a bunch of keyboards for me. >.>
OH! Gabriel Knight, gotcha, I can search that without fear :)
This game was literally insane when it was released. It came on 7 CDs. That was insane back in 1994.
I think the most CDs I ever had to deal with in the 90s was 6 for Pandora Directive. And my discs 5 and 6 always had a tendency to not work, so I ended up getting multiples of those discs from Access.
Really?
@@Cannotbetamed1 haha but dont you remember Indiann jones and the fate of Atlantis that run great on a 386 with 2meg ram and pc speaker that was early 1993 and needed 10 floppy disks i think, my poor computer had a 85 meg hard drive then and that was considerd average
This is one of the best games I played in my childhood. I was 13 and it scared the shit out of me (it still does).
I was 13 too and I had nightmares about it. I don't play it for ages, but I thought it was great back in the day.
A college friend who played this with me described it as “like reading a book, but with pages that are really hard to turn.”
The Phantom Menace reference was the scariest part of the video...
I find your voice very relaxing and love the way you do these reviews :)
Thanks!
“What isn’t banned in Australia” she bloody got us there mates! 😂
I am in Australia and I owned it. I think from Harvey Norman Geelong Victoria
My dad made me watch him play it when i was like 6, it has never left my brain since and now i have finally found the name of it.
This game was the best ever for its time imo. It took more patience to play but it was evolutionary using full video as game play. The mix of humor and suspense kept a good balance for genuine fright and scares and comic relief. I'd rate this game 4 uncooked acorns out of 5.
And mom jeans...don't forget the mom jeans.
"Mortar is best removed with a narrow, scraping implement". The one line that always stood out to me from this game.
There's also an obsession with drain cleaner.
Love this game!
This game was awesome in the day, I remember playing it as a kid... blew my socks off
I have an original Win '95 set that I'd now have to set up a dedicated Win '95 PC to run. Will consider.
They really pulled no punches with gore back then. And people talk about violence in todays games, but damn.
That intro was great.
Thank you!
The craziest part of this game is how everyone only owns one pair of clothes.
It feels like they did this game in one day.
I loved this game and played it all the time with different outcomes. My friends thought I was quite bizarre...
Great job on these old pc game reviews.
+Mowgli Baloo thanks!
I'm surprised I've never heard of this game as I was big into DOS point and click in the 90s... fascinating.
I remember seeing the box art in stores, but never picked it up at the time.
(Congratulations on 5000+!)
Your intro to this game was a lot more interesting than the game's actual content it seems! Ah yes, FMV, we remember it well, if not fondly. Not sorry I didn't play this the first time around. Thanks for playing it so we don't have to.
Thank you! I have very fond memories of some FMV games, but a lot are pretty bad
Just found your account. Immediately subbed! Such a great channel and I dig your voice, easy to listen to during the video.
Welcome to the channel!
This was one of the first adventure games I played on my first windows 98 PC in 1998. I feel so old. The other was Gabriel knight 2, which is still to this day a favorite.
it would be creepy to see a movie about this game...
This game is amazing, it is a immersive game. For 1995, it did feel amazing
It was neither amazing, nor immersive, not even back in 1995 when I played it for the first time.
Estel Lia Well, thats like your opinion man
I see you rolled your way into the semis. Dios mio, man. Liam and me, we're gonna fuck you up.
Estel Lia
Bring it
So you quote The Dude but you don't recognize The Jesus?
Great review Pam, when I saw you had this game I let my wife know because she remembers playing it back in the day too.
Thanks! I think I picked up the physical game at your last show.
Your facial expressions in this interview get me every time.
Thank you for such an in depth and thoughtful review! Subbed :) PS I'm curious in which game you make a moustache out of cat hair and maple syrup? XD
Thanks! The cat mustache was in Gabriel Knight 3.
CompUSA refused to sell it, yet I bought it at WalMart at the time.
there really were some puritans in congress back then lol.
imagine them reacting to mortal kombat 11 or gta 5
Well they did react negatively to the old mortal Kombat
I played both games as a 15/16 y/o kid back in the 90's and they both were really really good and unique gaming experience.
This game gave me nightmares as a child and I need to see someone do a complete playthrough so I know what happens and it no longer taunts me.
This game was actually Sierra's biggst selling game ever next to Half-Life. When it was released in August 1995, it sold 1 million copies within the first month (which was a lot for 1995). The next year, however, Sierra was sold to CUC International, and Bob Davidson, co-founder of Davidson & Associates (an educational software company) was put in charge of the combined company (CUC Software). Because Davidson and Sierra now shared a combined sales force (Davidson's sales force, not Sierra's) and Davidson's sales force was used to selling games to educators and even schools, Davidson's people couldn't justify selling this type of utterly graphic game to retailers, so support for Phantasmagoria was severely cut and it became harder to find at market, dramatically undermining sales.
The problem was that Bob Davidson treated Sierra as a Davidson studio, rather than treating them as an independent subsidiary like Davidson had done with Blizzard (Davidson bought Blizzard back in 1994). The Davidsons left CUC in January 1997 but by then the damage was already done to Sierra's ability to sell their games, and a lot of Davidson people still ran the product development and marketing at CUC/Cendant Software anyway.
really good game from the 90s underrated horror and full of atmosphere
I was soooo happy when I saw you bring up Tex Murphy at 5:05
The Tex Murphy series is my all time favorite! Played through the whole series again last year and it held up well. :D
I have a review of Under a Killing Moon as well
@@Cannotbetamed1 Yea, watched that one right after. lol
Pam I have just found your channel and I am hooked your videos are awesome. I look forward to getting through them all.
Thank you, and welcome!
Will you review the second game of the series eventually?
I remember when I was 18 years old 24 / 7 playing the pc version of the land of the dead road to fiddlers green on my acer windows xp gaming desktop pc 24 / 7 when I was 18 years old 24 / 7!
I played this game long time ago and I thought It was ok. Back then, there were not very good RPG games. I had fun playing it.
Phantasmagoria is not an rpg.
What but this isnt an rpg
These games blew my mind with the live actors, I kind of wish this had stayed a thing
It still is a thing.
@@Cannotbetamed1 what games are like this? I just know Phantasmagoria I and II and that X-Files game you reviewed
My parents at the time, got me this game when I was like 15. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to get the sequel. I was at the computer gaming store with my mom and asked one of the clerks if the game was any good. He looked at my 16 year old self, looked at my mom, looked at the game(filled with gratuitous S&M sex scenes) , then back at me and said, "Yeeah.. i heard it wasn't as good as the first one" Cut to 25 years later me finally buying it on GOG. I was like of course LOL!
I want to play the sequel at some point, hopefully it's more exciting.
Cannot be Tamed play doom🙃
This game was prob one of my most badass child memories.
I recently streamed this game and I absolutely loved it!! So glad it works with DOS-BOX
its a good game
Played this game , it was so fun those days back in 1995 , with soundblaster turn on to full blast , it’s really a fun game
I actually enjoyed phantasmagoria, but you have valid points on the long animations/ lack of commentary by the main character. The sequel is decent, but as far as point and click horror, I prefer shivers 1 and shivers 2.
I haven't played those ones
Great job, Pam. Man, what a tedious game. these FMV games certainly had their place in history but they seem so hard to go back to. I think it's cool though that they hold a special place in your heart.
Thanks! There are some FMV games that work better than this one I think.
Your facial expressions really make this, got a lot of laughs at the opening gag.
:)
You are right on the money here. I played this when it first came out and was like, are you kidding me? This is a landmark achievement? Sierra had been biting off more than it could chew in the technological front. It was one of the first studios that abandoned DOS in favor of Windows, which turned out to be a couple of years too early. They spent all this money for the CGI and movie sets, and all that money showed up only in those incredibly pixellated FMV scenes. The technology at the time was just not up to par. If they had today's technology it would be different. But nowadays no one would spend that kind of money on an adventure game.
My problem wasn't so much that the technology was bad... they just relied on it way too much. Like they thought people would be so impressed by the image of a real actor in the game that they didn't give that actor anything interesting to say or do for most of it.
@@Cannotbetamed1 Contemporary reviews were mostly positive, since the tech was deemed impressive at the time (but not by me, as I mentioned). You can see a 1995 review by Canadian female author Arinn Dembo at the cgwmuseum dot org website. Go to the Galleries section and download the Nov 1995 issue of Computer Gaming World, which was the leading gaming publication at the time. Dembo gave it a positive review, and mentioned some interesting gender issues as well.
Hey pam have you played this new game called the bunker? if so what do you think about it? its like your modern day point and click game which i think you might like.
I haven't played it. Looks like it just came out. I'll have to put it on my wishlist.
You should definitely play it pam! I dont want to spoil anything but basically its a real time point and click in what it feels like a Fallout scenario, Its really good i just beaten it last night.
That scene struggling with the lock......ha. There's such a harsh reset when actions are completed. "Put arms at sides, and stare blankly off in some random direction." It's like Adrian is a robot waiting for her next command. I realize it's a result of tech limitations, because she had to be posed in SOME static way when awaiting for player input. Also, I want to know more about the real estate agent.
doing a great job. I hope to see classic game reviews soon. God bless and keep safe.
This is a classic game review.
Thank you for covering this game. And it was interesting and good to know what happened to some of the actors careers. This game was pretty hyped up when it was released due to the multiple CD-ROMs back then. It was a 'novelty'.
If there are seven CD roms it must be good!
Cannot be Tamed I’m sorry...how many CDs did this game come in at the time of its release???
So much nostalgia even though I never owned it. I remember I used to buy my PC games from SAMs club back during the time of this, KQ7, and Myst. This always stuck out at me due to the beautiful box art. Nice!!
The box art is really great (though not particularly related to the game)
Great review, Pam! I remember going over to a friend's house when this came out and being super bored, but then loving the gruesome death scenes... hey, I was a teen...
Thanks! I can understand how this would appeal at a young age.
Do you happen to have plans on reviewing any of the Gabriel Knight games? I really enjoy those.
Jake Kristof I would like to replay those again soon
You are so underrated, wow! :) Awesome intro.
Thanks!
Nowadays, it has some "Planet 9 from outer Space" Charme to it.
Can you review "Ripper" sometimes please?
I was actually pretty excited about the recent rerelease the game had, even if it is horrible. On another related note, I've never seen your channel before and for some reason YT kept recommending your videos today so I finally gave in and watched a few. Good stuff, best of luck with it.
I remember seeing this when it came out, but never got a chance to try it.
While I enjoyed the game (in a guilty pleasure way) , I found your criticisms spot on, there was a lot of padding and I was surprised that Roberta Williams said she thought it was her best game
I was also surprised at that. Maybe it's just because it was the most complex to put together.
was that dennis hopper in one scene?
I'm about 5 years late to this party, but
.... Great review! I enjoyed it. I can't be the first person to ask this, but have you tried Phantasmagoria 2? I never played it, but I've seen the longplay. Gameplay still looked pretty stale, but the story was honestly quite riveting in my opinion. Very different with genuinely unexpected and satisfying twists. If you decide to make another retro adventure game review, give it a thought.
Thank you so much! I would like to try the sequel.
Hi, Pam. Nice review.
Thanks!
Cannot be Tamed Will you review more PC games?
Yep, I will
Cannot be Tamed Amazing.
I love full throttle cheers for craming it in here.
I also have a full review of Full Throttle up
@@Cannotbetamed1the apocalypse song that plays near the trailer changed my life . I played the game when it was release , and i still have it stuck in my head every once an then . Ma mamas face.
. Has dripped down to the dirt ... haha thanks i hope to see this
At the time this came out, the graphics were so cool and new, it was less annoying to watch the animations. The expectation of fast gameplay, especially in this genre, was less than it was now.
Wow I forgot all about this game man what a throwback
I love this pam!
Thanks!
The actress was hot!
1:20 Jesus, that game box is like the size of my monitor.
I just played through Little Misfortune, which had a location named Phantasmagoria. I wonder if it's a deliberate reference, seems likely since Killmonday also makes point-and-click adventures.
Hello! Does anyone know the layout of the second floor relative to the first? And as the staircase is adjacent to the second floor. The idea is very good, but I think that in this case it is not possible, a spiral staircase goes like nowhere. Where is located the second floor, and how he is there? It is not clear. But I'd really like to know.
I though it was an enjoyable game when I played it last year. I didn't mind the noodling around in it as much because overall it was a pretty short game (like 2 to 3 hours if I am remembering right?)
I think it took me 4-5 hours.
Say, Phantasmagoria! Nice review, I concur with your critique. And the 20 CDs it took to play it! The humanity!
Still, the campy horror and watermelon stunt-doubles wig me out on a primal level. Shouldn't have watched my big bro play this when I was, like, 7 or something. Yeow.
I do not miss CD-swapping at all.
cant lie, that intro segment was pretty funny haha
Thanks :)
One of the behind the scenes interviews with Ridley Scott on Alien, he mentioned something like gore doesn't create horror, it creates disgust. And as much as I see the usefulness of gore in horror stuff, yeah this game looks more gross and not really that scary. Entertaining review however and am happy to now be backing you on Patreon. :)
-Mad Wolf
First, thank you so much! Second, I agree. When I first saw the gory scenes here I just felt kinda sick, not scared. And they're so tonally different than everything else in the game.
I loved this game growing up
That intro was great
Thank you
Nice review, recently played phantasmagoria or as i called it the never ending tale of pancake butt. it was def hit or miss but was ok. and wasnt a bad game to stream. also least i didnt get 'totally' stuck which sometimes happens to me in PAC games. Ever play toon struck?
I hated when you could get really stuck in a game. I remember it happening in Leisure Suit Larry... 3 I think? I forgot to pick something up on an airplane then got a message at the end of the game saying I couldn't complete it. So annoying. I have not played Toon Struck.
well i got stuck in toon struck.however i do recommend it for what it is. i really try not to go to guides as long as possible with P&C games. For me phantasmagoria was more cryptic at the end when u could actually die but the dumbest thing (that i got stuck on) was i didnt know there was another part to the store so i was missing the dog bone forever! talk about feeling dumb XD... keep up the good work pam!!
Well....guess I’ll have to take this off my Steam wishlist
I found (when I played this in 1995 at the age of 13) that the end chase sequence made up for the slow ponderous build up and tonal weirdness - what did you think of it?
The weird thing is, the chase is *so* much better the less you prepare before going into the darkroom - if you don't get the items you need (the crucifix, the snowman, etc.) Don will chase you to every corner of the house as you collect them, while testing how well you memorized the layout, and finding ways hurt Don for a couple of moments. I get the impulse to reward the player for being thorough, but really some solid action at that point seems a much better reward!
This really stood out in my mind as one of stand out gaming experiences to my young impressionable mind. If you grabbed the book right after macing Don with drain cleaner, then I highly recommend playing it again.
+Magus Marquillin I thought the chase felt like trial and error, which I didn't really like.
I struggled when I first played it I’m planing on replaying it someday because I feel like my 17 year old high school self lol
Did you ever review 7th Guest? And 11th Hour?
Nope, haven’t played those
@@Cannotbetamed1 try find them. Btw I remember the hype for Phantasmagoria even before Internet, I got few info by the Sierra BBS, but like you said was a bump. It came in 6 or 7 cds back in the day.
I think that the biggest draw of this game are the hilarious mom jeans worn by the main character...and the spooky old "hoose" of course.
Well fun fact it was the actress’s real jeans
Honestly, I love FMV games. They're so unique in a 90s way that can't really be recreated anymore. Ever play Riana Rouge or Police Quest 4?
Nope, haven't played either of these.
I remember feeling a little confused about the characters and tone, but for some reason loved this game at the time as I didn't know what I was getting myself into at the time. The graphic scenes are pretty cool though but the rape scene was just awkward. I remember playing this with my dad on our first PC as we picked the Mature 18+ option xD Adrian kinda annoyed me and she was so prim and proper but as you say, completely oblivious despite seeing all that crap! I still have fond memories though. Great review! I love your voice hehe Thanks for the video!
Thank you so much! The game has it's charms, and I have a soft spot for FMV.
Cannot be Tamed Yeah me too! Since I've only recently found your channel I haven't had a chance to look through all your reviews and I would assume you've already done 7th Guest and/or 11th Hour?
No, this was the first PC game I'm done, I've mostly stuck to console so far.
Cannot be Tamed Ah fair enough! it's...well I'll let you find out if you decide to take a look :p
This game even has a listing on IMDb with a 8.2 / 10 rating. November 2023
yeah.. I play it at 1995 with my Intel Pentium 1 PC + 7 original disc.
how expensive game at that time
loved this game! Tex Murphy games were the upper tier of FMV in my opinion
I agree about Tex Murphy
i like the intro-theme of your vids :)
Thanks!
Got me as a kid stuck in my mind love fmv games
I remember playing this when I was 17 years old I felt sick after the deaths
They're pretty gruesome.
OMG... I remember PC Magazine doing a review on this game when I was a kid...
I've always wanted to play this, lol
To be fair, we didn't have an R-18 rating for video games back then. It wasn't until 2013 that we got it the R-18 rating. Bloody politicians.....
great video! :)
Thank you!
"this is not a good game" hahaha...don t listen to her..
Do you own the Saturn Version? All 8 discs?
No
Have you played the sequel and do you have an instagram account
I haven't played the sequel. I do have a personal Instagram.
Good honest review. In my opinion games like these you cannot really recommend playing based on experience, and it is your curiosity that plays the biggest part here. Similar to some movies. You may know (without spoilers) that they are not that good, but somehow you need to satiate that curiosity and play the game (or watch the movie). This was the case for me with this game. Overall an interesting experience that would not "unplay" :)
I feel that way about a lot of games? I wouldn't call them good, but I also don't regret playing them.
Out of interest, did you play this for the first time when it came out or just recently (and by recently I mean this century).
I just played it for the first time recently.
Only me that thinks that your voice seems a lot like with the main actress?
All negative aspects aside I still love Phantasmagoria. It has an unique charm that no other game succeed it. Another example is Darkseed.