Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh

This game is still one of my favorites, even today. The great story, the nice graphics (comparing to other games from that period of time) and the perfect acting makes the winning combination that is Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh. See, even the title is cool!? The downside - if any at all - is the puzzles that are sometimes impossible to solve without a walkthrough. But I guess it's not unusual that a game like this has some hard puzzles. Having said that, I'll have to repeat my praise and add that you'll get some great scares. I almost had a heart attack... :) If you played the first Phantasmagoria - that in my opinion was much weaker - don't let it scare you away from this title, it's great!

Most of the game was OK, just not good. The acting (like the first game) is sub-par. The game is really, really easy especially if you've played the first one. Most of the layout is now old-hat and other FMV games have gone the way of the dinosaur.

It's a pity these couldn't amount to more.

I haven't actually played the game, but I have watched a complete let's play done by Noah Antwiler which I strongly recommend.

Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh is everything that was awful about the FMV era of gaming, but also something you have to see to believe. It's plagued by the issue of old adventure games that it does not give you good (and in some cases any) direction as to what you should be doing or where you're suppose to go in many parts of the game, especially the beginning.

You play as Curtis Craig who works some office job at a pharmaceutical company. He has a girlfriend name Jocelyn, a gay friend named Trevor (who is the best character in the game), office enemy Bob, office whore Therese, hilariously generic evil boss PA Warner (this guy could be a Saturday morning cartoon villain), and Tom your supervisor who is kind of dull but okay.

You are just a normal boring guy with a pet rat and I will give the game credit for starting slow before going off the rails. I won't spoil it for you, but this is a game you would be better off watching Spoony's let play on YouTube than actually play the game since as a game its not well programmed. They did put a lot of work into the FMVs and it has charm as a B movie horror film. If you are interested I think gog.com (Good Old Games) has it for sale for like $5-6.

This game might have been way different than the first, but in a good way.

First of the game is much longer! (that is a plus in the book for me as games that only last me a few hours seems a waste of money)

Second it keeps the "chase" feeling later in the game, where curtis has to kill mutations of his friends, boss and enemy.

Third it has you entangled in the story and you feel actually sorry for Curtis in some parts.

Fourth it was more violent than the first.

And there is alot more that makes this game better than the first...

Full Motion Video games were a new wrinkle when the first Phantasmagoria came out, and were rapidly going the way of the passenger pigeon by the time this one was released. Sort of ironic.

This one featured smoother game play. I was glad they used more actual sets than filming entirely on bluescreen with minimal real objects (as they did in the first). Still, a lot of the locations (particularly the office and the science facility) seemed rather contrived.

The acting was far and away better than the first, though it was still not great by any means. The plot was not particularly good. Main character was fairly well developed, but the whole 'alien' aspect and all that wasn't adequately explained.

5.5 on a scale of 10.