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!