Episode 138 - A Coy Smooch - Realms of the Haunting

I just heard a riveting podcast with my father. Which would be
great, except he’s dead. Welcome back to the most terrifying
podcast around! Today, we’re going to be talking about Realms of
the Haunting, a 90s FMV adventure game with some FPS mechanics
thrown in for good measure. This game falls well into the campier
side of old FMV games, and if I was trying to sell you on the game
it’s what I’d be focusing on. It is both laugh-out-loud funny and
also impressive in almost equal measure between the absurd
cutscenes and the level of detail they and other parts of the game
contain. The lighting effects in the game are surprisingly good for
the time, the voiceover is not terrible and is incredibly
expansive, with dialog describing most of the objects in the
environment and all your inventory items and things you interact
with. That said, it is still an old adventure game and there are
going to be some hurdles to overcome to enjoying the game. The
level design, while pretty cool aesthetically, can lead to players
getting lost and has a bit of an overreliance on that maze-style
design of early FPS games (not to mention having several literal
mazes in it as well). Where to go next isn’t always clear and using
weapons and items isn’t as straightforward we would like, causing
some hiccups in the moment to moment gameplay. However, if you can
get past all that, or are just used to it because you play a lot of
older PC games, this is a strange and interesting one worth
checking out. We’re going to be talking about the missed
opportunity to emphasize the survival horror elements of this title
with meaningful resource management, how the silliness of the story
and cutscenes really elevate the experience of playing, and we
reveal what is the most metal of outerwear. Thank you for joining
us again this week! We only discovered this game fairly recently
and knew almost instantly it was something we wanted to talk about
and bring other people’s attention to. I give this game a lot of
credit for what it was able to do for the time and for fans of the
adventure genre or just campy old horror stuff it hits a sort of
sweet spot between being engaging and silly. What did you think? It
isn’t the most hidden, but had you heard of this game before today?
Do you think the navigation and puzzles are just too obtuse to be
fun? Let us know in the comments or over on our DIscord server! We
still have one pocket episode to do before the end of Halloween
season (and that one will be coming out pretty damn close to the
holiday itself), but that’s all she wrote for the main episodes
this month. Next time, we’re lightening things up a lot (or a
little, depending on how much you buy into the “dark lore” part of
the franchise) and are talking about Kirby and the Forgotten Land,
so we hope you’ll stop by for that!