Lastly, I didn’t see what was the point of the game’s chapter-based structure. After all, many would prefer simple puzzles and fast play if there were an engaging story to enjoy, but which is sadly not the case here. The puzzles themselves aren’t that imaginative or difficult, although some (including myself) would argue that this isn’t necessarily a horrible thing. Victoria Morsell’s performance is decent enough but everyone else just drags the story down. The game itself would have been considerably better if the acting weren’t as bad. Scratch the surface and you’ll find a fairly traditional puzzle-based game, though not nearly as complex as anything you’d see in other Sierra installments. Phantasmagoria, while still being of dubious quality as far as plot or technical wizardry, does at least manage to integrate both the use of video and gameplay into one responsive whole.

In many such cases, the use of FMV had a negative impact on the product by making the videos take precedence over gameplay you weren’t playing a game, and on top of that you weren’t even watching a good movie for the most part either. It was felt that cartoon characters would not the campy horror story, and so the game uses live actors combined with pre-rendered scenery. Such was the case with Phantasmagoria, otherwise noted for being Roberta Williams’ initial foray into modern horror.

Here we have a means, thought game designers, of actually cramming hour-long movies and integrating them into gameplay. Probably the most influential development to shape 90s adventure gaming was the advent of CD-ROMs, and the seemingly infinite storage capacity that came with them.

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