Phantasmagoria

As far as I know this game is the first "interactive movie" Sierra's made. Apart from the quality of the graphics, I'd say they made a pretty good job of it.

Story

This is the classic horror movie setup (see Poltergeist). A young couple (Don and Adriene) want to start their life together in a new house. They buy a huge mansion, but they don't pay too much attention to the history of the house. As usual, it doesn't take long before strange things start happening. It starts with Adriene having horrible nightmares. Don is a photographer, so his first thought is to find a place for his lab. While he does that, we get plenty of time to explore the mansion (obviously we play the role of Adriene). That's when we find out that the previous owner of the house was a very famous illusionist, who died in pretty mysterious circumstances. His horrifying shows were called: Phantasmagoria.

Opinion

I'm sorry if the story seems too brief, but I didn't want to give away too much of it. There are some twists and turns in the game that really cannot (and should not) be described.

Now let's see the usual properties. The graphics are okay, but dispite of being SVGA they look a bit 'chunky'. You probably can't see it on these pictures (I tried to choose some better pics and then scaled them down), but in full screen it catches your eye immediately. One other thing about the graphics. The movies were made with the blue screen technique and sometimes that's really apparent. It didn't bother me in Gabriel Knight 2, but it did in this game (to be fair, this piece is much older than GK2). Anyway, I promise these things won't save you from being scared out of your pants.

The music is absolutely horrifying, it serves its purpose all too well. I always loved these religious songs, I only wish we could hear them more during the game. I don't want to waste too much time with the controls, they're simple point-and-click, nothing special (but they do make the game a bit more enjoyable; you don't have to mess around with the five different mouse cursors). And in closing a little piece of advice: check everything you pick up thoroughly.

A great horror game for people with strong stomachs.