Penumbra: Overture (PC)

I believe that Penumbra Overture is one of the first games to take mouse control in a direction like this, where you can use it to open a drawer by moving the mouse backwards, close it by moving it forwards and so on. Every physical puzzle is based on such an interaction and it adds to the sense of immersion, I won’t spoil any of the game at all by explaining this in great detail, suffice it to say that the system works quite well (it does fall down in a couple of places, until you get extremely confident with it).

I don’t see Penumbra being a game that you can just pick up and play without making a lot of mistakes.

The game keeps the creepy atmosphere by including fear into the equation and further drawing similarities with H.P.Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Look too long at one of the grotesque dangers of the game and your character will react by nearly losing his mind.

So with the innovative (sometimes fiddly) mouse driven interaction gameplay, Penumbra shines as a very thoughtful title. It doesn’t quite hit the mark in terms of getting these physics based puzzles bang on all the time, but I didn’t really care about that since I was having a good time playing it. I didn’t really mind that I was doing the equivalent of searching for keycards in Doom by looking for another way past another locked door.

I’ve heard people mention that the monster models and graphics in the game aren’t quite up to par, again, this is a small team and since they’ve done something quite unique I don’t care too much about that because the game is immensely playable and extremely fun (as well as mentally taxing in places) to play. It’s suitably creepy graphics wise, dark and mysterious, as well as genuinely shocking in places. The bottom line is that the graphics are good enough and they immerse you into the game.

You should really play it in a darkened room and a quiet house, not one with cats in though because they have a habit of jumping on your lap when you least expect it.

The game has some suitably creepy music to go along with the visuals, it has some fairly decent dialogue and voices especially Red’s voice, but I won’t go any further because of spoilers. Your main character’s voice sounds suitable; it’s got that genuine person feel and doesn’t really give you the impression that you’re a movie-style action hero (which you’re not).

The developers spent some time with the AI; it’s not dumb as a brick AI at all and will bring other nearby enemies to your location. Run away, team up and so on. A great achievement for a 4 man team I think, and personally I found the AI to be quite a challenge.

It does have a few problems, clunky story, dark graphics in places and these slightly rugged models – but it has enough innovations and atmosphere to keep me coming back for more, which is what the developers should be happy to know. It’s not a big budget production and I think they have done a sterling job and should be commended for it, so I have scored it appropriately since I feel it’s a great first part to what promises to be an interesting series.

I look forwards to seeing what they can come up with for part 2.