Penumbra Collection review (PC)

The Penumbra Collection is comprised of three games. Overture (which was previously reviewed on this site) followed by Black Plague and Requiem.

You start the series in a typical horror setting that could have been taken from many games, films or books, in Greenland, searching for your father after receiving a letter from him after he has died. You find yourself isolated in a mine after a cave-in with no weapons, no belongings and very little light. Throughout the games a sense of deep hopelessness permeates everything. The atmosphere is so otherworldly, so much like the nightmare we have all had at some point in our lives, where we wake with a sense of dread so thick and cloying, wondering if we are awake, or still dreaming, or something else entirely. The writing is dark and unique, the situations and characters as diverse as they are strange.

The puzzles are wonderfully put together and never obtuse, always using the brilliant physics engine in a most lifelike manner, making your mind the only limitation. Each one of the Penumbra episodes, while short, is astoundingly engrossing and terrifying. Your enemies are not always numerous, but the lack of weapons, for the most part, shines a bright light on the fact that you are so very vulnerable and only quick thinking can save your life. Of course there are many times you won't be quick enough and die a lonely death due in part to the clumsy weapon controls, but the checkpoints are never far apart. The save points are also never too far away. Overall the games are very well thought out, often giving you just enough rope with which to hang yourself with. Some puzzles seem simple at times but there are more ways to solve many of the tasks you will face than you will first realise and some take a good bit of brain power to work out.

Overture

Overture starts off the game world with a great sense of haunting loneliness that heightens drastically with Black Plague, which has many improvements over its predecessor. The controls have been tightened up, for a more fluid movement of any object you hold in your grasp and the enemy are more strategically placed, allowing for better tactics when dealing with them. Sadly, the weapons are still cumbersome to use given that you have to hold a mouse button down and swing the mouse in the direction of the strike. It’s clumsy and does not work well at all. I can’t help thinking that this was intentional, because running from an enemy and hearing them shuffling after you is terrifying and more often than not the best way of despatching your foe is to use the environments, either to kill or trap them, making it possible for you to then escape. This method of progressing toward your goal is remarkably effective and has you looking over your shoulder many times as you play.

The game play has been kept simple, but far from shallow or boring. The puzzles push you to the point where you come up with the answer just as you start to despair and the sound does a sterling job of scaring you in such subtle ways. It eats away at your confidence in your abilities, your heart beating in the background, getting louder when you get spooked, your breathing more laboured, your vision impaired. Sounds come from all directions, building a believable world full of characters with horrific tendencies where nothing is normal and no-one is sane. Some of the plot mechanics even make you doubt your own sanity, with things appearing and disappearing when you turn around or making you do things you really don’t want to do and voices that whisper nonsensically into your ears. It’s hard to explain without giving any of the story away and that’s something I won’t spoil.

Requiem

The narrative in the final part, Requiem, is a bizarre convoluted affair that seems more rooted in madness and puzzles than plot direction and is an expansion pack to Penumbra rather than a continuation of the series. It is not as tense as the first two and borrows heavily from the Half-Life universe and I am sure many others. At this point I have to say that I loved the change of pace in Requiem. The challenges you face are so well thought out (even if they make no sense in the grand scheme) that you can’t help but smile when you beat one that at first looked too much for you.

The graphics in the series world very well and filters are used to great effect, making everything dark and murky. Some of the locations are similar aesthetically but purvey the right look at all times. Everything is suitably run down and in a total state of disrepair. Unfortunately the animation and character models leave a lot to be desired, even if they are not as important as the rest of the game mechanics. Their design and movement tip you off to the fact that these are low budget games by a small company.

But, if you let that simple thing put you off the Penumbra Collection you will be missing out on some of the best Survival Horror/Puzzle games I have played in years. They will not take you long to finish (about 4 hours each) but they are so refreshing in a time of bland mass market games that I can’t recommend them enough.