Taking the PC graphic adventure to the dank caverns below
Format: PC Dev: Frictional Games Pub: Paradox Interactive Out: 20/02/09 Players: 1
Penumbra Collection is a series of games developed by Frictional Games and republished by Paradox. The collection contains Overture, Black Plague and Requiem. However, the latter is not intended as a direct story continuation of its predecessors, but as a more experimental effort focusing on gameplay over narrative.
The first thing I’ll say is that the collection is one of those few games I’d like to categorise as an experience. To survive Penumbra, you must rely on wit, intuition and actually not peeing yourself. You play Phillip, whose dad left him and his mum a year ago, and supposedly died. Phillip’s mum soon passes away, but just after her passing, you receive a strange note from your dad. What? Either way, the contents of the note leads Phillip on a pretty formidable quest for answers. The games are set underground with huge networks of mines, to eerie research facilities and filthy halls. So as you can imagine, it’s a pretty dark game. A flashlight or a glowstick is recommended. Unless there’s a mutated dog with glowing yellow eyes roaming about though, in that case, you’d better run like hell behind the nearest crate.
The game is a graphic adventure. If you’ve played Myst before, it’s a similar style of play. But unlike Myst, this isn’t point-and-click movement it’s real-time movement, which greatly adds to the games interactivity and immersion. If you haven’t played Myst before, a graphic adventure is simply an adventure game usually set in first-person. There is a huge focus on puzzle solving and you need to be in the right frame of mind to play them. Penumbra uses a very accessible system of gameplay, there are only four things to remember: crouch, inventory, movement, and the difference between the right and left mouse buttons.
As with most games of this type, exploration is mandatory. You may spend an hour progressing through an area, past several enemies and puzzles, only to find yourself lacking a keycard for a door. As you can imagine, it’s frustrating. Which brings us to the next issue – this game is not easy. Not by a long shot. While some of the objectives are common sense, most of the puzzles are incredibly elaborate. More often than not, there’s a certain order to do things, and doing it wrong could mean you need to restart. If you want to play through this game without a walkthrough, you’ll need time, and a lot of it. The puzzles are hard enough, without having to avoid spiders, dogs, mutants and giant worms that kill you in one or two shots.
Visually the game is good, with a few glitches here and there, but as with most horrors, its music and sound make the game what it is. And it’s damn scary. It’s not often you can say that about a game. Picture this: you’re wandering around in near darkness. You hear some sort of grunt. You flick your torch on, and patrolling the door ahead of you, is a demented human-like creature, with a very messed up body. If it sees you, you are dead. With the speakers on, you’ll likely hear its footsteps pass you. The moment you look at it, Phillip will panic and blow his cover. Run!
But is this a bad thing? Was the game meant to be easy? Probably not. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t say this title isn’t for the casual gamer and it’s certainly not for those who are impatient. Without external help, Overture and Black Plague will take a long, long time to finish. If you’re up to it, I fully recommend the series. They don’t require high-specs, and they’re a lot of fun to play. Despite struggling through Overture, I couldn’t wait to start the next one. The challenge has been set.
Lewis Townsend
[Originally published on Monday, 9 February 2009]
