This Month's Most Viewed Games Tagged 'Windows, DOS, adventure, horror' on The Great Games Experiment http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/css/logo.jpg en-us Made during the height of the "interactive movie" boom in the computer game industry, Phantasmagoria is notable for being one of the first adventure games to use a human being as an on-screen avatar. Actress Victoria Morsell spent months in front of a bluescreen filming the hundreds of actions players could direct her character to perform. The game was released on seven CDs to accommodate the massive amount of video generated by this process. Today it still stands as a record of sorts for the largest number of media cuts used in a game, though several other games including an adventure game based on The X-Files television series have matched it in the sheer number of CDs used. However, if it were to use modern day video compression codecs while keeping the same resolution, the game could probably have shipped on as little as one or two discs. On the other hand, however, the seven discs were used to highlight the seven days, during which the story takes place - the game could easily fit about five discs, even without the advanced video compression. Also, it is worth mentioning that large portions of data were repeated on each CD, to avoid disk swapping when playing the game.

The game script was about 400 pages long, four times the size of a regular movie script, and an additional 100 pages of storyboards set the style for the over 800 scenes in the game. The game required four months of filming alone and over 200 persons were involved in the production, not counting the Gregorian choir of 135 persons that was used for parts of the music in the game.

Source: Wikipedia Article

]]> 14 Apr 2007 12:45:09 "I Have No Mouth, And I must Scream" is an adult adventure game based on Harlan Ellison's short story of the same name. The original story was written in one night during 1966 and went on to become one of the 10 most re-printed stories in history. It also won a Hugo award in 1968.









"More than a century before the story opens, a supercomputer called AM had already destroyed the entire human race save for the five protagonists. Before AM's present incarnation, there had been three separate American, Soviet and Chinese supercomputers, each programmed for fighting an increasingly complex global war against its two opponents. However, the computers evolved and connected to each other, gained sentience and subsequently annihilated all humanity. AM feels its own creation was an act of unimaginable cruelty because he possesses so much power and can do so little with it, and therefore possesses an extreme hatred for humanity. The machine's hatred combined with its godlike power resulted in the destruction of the human race, save for the five individuals whom AM trapped and then artificially sustained at their current ages indefinitely, solely for the purpose of tormenting them forever."
Source: Wikipedia





The game is played as a point'n'click adventure and has a unique story delving into the tormented souls of the remaining five people on Earth - Gorrister, Ellen, Benny, Nimdok and Ted. After the successful completion of each adventure a showdown with AM himself will occur. The game is incredibly well conceived and has had much input from the original author. The script, visuals and audio all add to the incredible atmosphere and help maintain the eerie and frightening premise that is laced with the horrors of insanity, selfishness, rape, racism, paranoia and genocide.


The script for the computer game differs slightly from the original to allow for the transition from literature to the interactive medium and was again penned by Harlan Ellison. Ellison even lends his vocal talent to the game, voicing the super-computer/super-villain "AM".

]]> 03 Mar 2007 12:34:57 In 1996, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh by Lorelei Shannon was released. Though still enormous in size coming on five separate CDs it was in no way as large as its predecessor.

Dropping the unique adventure game style interaction in favor of an interactive movie format, A Puzzle of Flesh was more expensive to produce and less popular with audiences tiring of video clip-driven games. Though some concluded that it was a substantial improvement over the original in several areas, others dismissed the game, criticizing it for its completely different atmosphere, lack of creativity, interactivity and excessive violence.

The plot of the second game in the series revolves around the character of Curtis Craig, a 30-year-old man working in a company managed by the enigmatic Paul Warner. Curtis' mysterious and traumatic past is a key element in the plot, as he pieces together his experience to form a picture of his soul, one whose discovery might lead to his demise. Harassed by quasi-delusions which seem all too real, Curtis aims to uncover the truth about his family, co-workers and most importantly, his own existence. As his delusions become more and more real and begin to have an enormous, terrible impact on his surroundings, Curtis must confront his fears or risk getting devoured by what lives within him.

A Puzzle of Flesh has a fairly standard interface, with the cursor shaped into the distinctive logo of WynTech

Source: Wikipedia entry

]]> 14 Apr 2007 12:48:40