Playdate: Phantasmagoria: Puzzle of the Flesh (02/10/2016)

Remembering that isn't so hard since it's brought up in almost every livestream. ;p

I really wanted to play this game when I was a kid - than God I never got it.

WOW! This game's endings are...just garbage. I can't even imagine playing through all this back in the day just to get THOSE...I mean this is the same era that gave us the lost Twisted Metal FMV endings, COME ON!

Though, credit where it's due, the game as a whole clearly had everyone firing on all cylinders and THAT'S what made it entertaining, at the very least.

Same kind of person who puts salt in coffee?

Hot damn, I think this might be the worst story/ending in a video game I have ever seen.

"He threw a bunch of shit at me and I died!"

Parts of this game are so much worse then I realized, but in contrast the stuff near the end is somehow way more amazing than what I remembered!

What an awful game and but a great viewing experience. That last puzzle was probably the worst ive seen ever.

I wonder how anyone managed to finish this game without a FAQ or something back in the day.

Wellp, Stetler is at least still alive and active, though not in the world of FMV games...Letters Aloud.

I'm sure he has talked about Phantasmagoria 2 more than enough, but I'd still love it, if you guys actually managed to chat with him somehow and bring the results over to GB.

This game...

I have to agree with the posters that brought up how this game actually has a cool premise. I wonder what happened. Maybe the idea was handed off to someone else? Is it someone who can only come up with a good premise?

Holy shit the ending...

The puzzles became not only so abstract, it was as if they were from another game entirely. This is some C-Grade Myst-ish shit going on this area. Also, this area. I mean, you see that demon/ghost and hell even Curtis later and you are expecting "Dimension X" to be a hellhole of pulsating, mutated flesh and blood. Instead it looks like some caves with abstract simple 3D models in it. Wires. Fix the patch in the wire Curtis! HORRIFYING.

Thanks guys for doing this! I was afraid when you started you wouldn't see it through, but thankful that you did.

@quantris: I don't blame him... get this stupid game out of the way.

I actually kinda liked the first game, but this one was a lot worse IMO. Maybe it is just that the setting of an old manor is just much more interesting to me then the workplace setting of this one.

Our endings are really lackluster, so let's throw some super bullshit puzzles in there at the end so hopefully nobody will see them.

There's something about these 90's adventure games where you have a FMV person on static pre-rendered backgrounds that REALLY creeps me the fuck out and not in the way I think they intended.

BLOODRECUTION

I kinda dug the 90's Clive Barker-esque, X-Files/Millenium, industrial rock atmosphere that this game gave off, you don't see much like that past the early 2000's.

Besides that this game seems like total bullshit. I cannot imagine playing this without a guide. I mean 80% of the stuff they did not one would have ever guessed except by random clicking on every item that turned white. Glad I was more into Lucasarts adventure games and not Sierra.

Bakalar is always welcome

awful games made entertaining by GBE! you should trademark that (ask Austin)

If nothing else, it was a real treat to see everyone between GB East and the chat united in total indignation at the bullshit this game unabashedly throws at you.

Harvester, Darkseed 2, Burn: Cycle, and Hell: A Cyberpunk Adventure would all make for excellent future GBE Playdates. Hope you guys do more crazy FMV games. This one was a hoot!

@lonelyspacepanda:

As bad as things got, and the bad way they dealt with Mental Health, it was nice to see them create a character that was gay and not a 90's gay stereotype. Many games and media today have a hard time with that.

My god, what a *thing*.

That was so great, thanks guys. Love me some Bakalar!

A humble proposal to GBEast:

Harvester. I would pay extra money for a Harvester series. Makes Phantasmagoria 2 look like Monkey Island. And holy shit, for all the surprisingly competent treatment of homosexuality in this game, Harvester takes the absolute opposite route.

Oh, I just thought of another one and this is actually really, really good. It'd be perfect as it balances dated absurdity with actually good storytelling (for the most part): Sanitarium

If Vinny doesn't already, I bet he'd genuinely love it. Awesome overlooked 90s adventure game.

It's so subversive and cynical about American culture, that I give it the benefit of the doubt that it's making fun of stereotypes of homosexuality rather than displaying stereotypes to make fun of homosexuality. Nothing in that game can be taken at face value. That said, it could have been handled much better. But I'm a fan boy. It's one of my favorite games.

"Sometimes you have to take some meat to get some meat, Steve!"

You guys should really play Harvester

Nice, the director of Threshold project is called Peter Sutcliffe. Classy.

Wow

I have to say I'm disappointed by the ending. Not only how the story closes out, but how the game play goes form annoying 90s adventure game puzzle solving into totally 'bats-hit crazy' 90s adventure game puzzles.

But, hey, I'm happy they played it. I have only played bits of some 90s adventure games, so they are a bit of a mystery. I was more of an 80s text adventure guy, so tons of Zork, Hitchhikers Guide, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, etc.

I would like them to play "80 Days" next, at least a little; perhaps, get as far as Japan.

Jeff really does look like a youth pastor.

Man I feel like production values for games and video are too good now for a game like this to ever be made again. Even the new revival fmv games just dont have the charm of the old stuff.

Actors superimposed onto backgrounds and that kind of stuff that just gives the look and feel of what these games are. The old stuff feels like games based around video and the new stuff feels like an interactive movie.

that flesh puzzle...

I think Alex should have let Vinny try the portal puzzle for longer before getting impatient. Despite the fact that it looks like random bullshit that no one could ever figure out, Vinny has 25 years of experience playing adventure games with puzzles you solve that are based on completely random bullshit that it seems like no one could ever figure out. So I think he should have at least let him try for like 5 minutes.

The last puzzle seemed perfectly fine except for having to repeat the prism thing. What really gets me is the completely arbitrary switch to right clicking for a couple interactions.

The wires, m***********s! THE WIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRSE!

Aw, it's no use, they recorded this days ago...

I browsed the page a bit, since they're in my area. One of the trailer clips made me pause: it was Jen Taylor.

There's like a weird Wario Ware style minigame thing going on in the latter part of this game.

I am not bothered by them cheating their way to the end. It is crazy to me that some of you are saying the that the puzzles are okay. It's a bad game...it's funny, but it's bad, and it makes almost zero sense. I can excuse adventure game logic when the game is trying to be zany or whatever, but this isn't trying to be that.

That was insane in every way. I wish they had seen some of the easter eggs in their playthrough. I'm sure the reactions would've been hilarious.

I can't believe that they had this detective be incredibly annoying repeatedly, and then there was zero payoff with that whole side of the story! Wait, no, I can totally believe that for this game.

That portal puzzle is complete MADNESS!

I'm hoping you guys can get to talk to someone involved in the game. As someone mentioned, the guy who plays Curtis is doing a project called Letters Aloud.

Paul Mitri who played Trevor has done an interview about the game. Seems like the project was mostly just an "it's a living" sort of deal. But there are still some fun bits in there.

This game was a blast to watch. More weird FMV games in the future I say!

Thank you guys. :)

When I first saw this...

I couldn't decide between Bonus Eruptus

or Boneitis

Flashbacks to 90s childhood...That end puzzle...

Honestly with them using the walkthrough the second the solution wasn't obvious they missed some stuff like the application from Hell or the nasty water cooler bit. Hell they straight up sequence broke the game by doing so with the password to up your clearance. I really feel they jumped way to fast to it, probably to keep it rolling.

The Angry Video Game Nerd got weird... (and a lot of action)

I'm angry just watching this garbage game being played. It was horrible all along, but that alien world was just complete bullshit, wow.

I'm so happy that they finished this.