As part of my "tackling the backlog" plan, i played through the entire Penumbra series: Overture, Black Plague and Requiem. Penumbra was created by Frictional games, the makers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and was in many ways the jumping pad for Frictional to deliver Amnesia. A lot of the elements that made Amnesia so great are already in the Penumbra series - the 'physical' mouse handling of objects and environment, amazing sound design - but you can clearly tell that they experimented and/or changed some things as well.
For example, in overture you're faced with a type of enemy but you also have 'weapons' of a sort. Stuff like a pickaxe or a crowbar. At first, these enemies are really scary, and they make the tension almost unbearable. But then you find out, or at least I did, that it's possible to sneak up on them and smack them to (un?)death. Given that every big level only had one or two of those enmies roaming the hallways, you could make the game a lot less scary rather easily.
So in Black Plague you're faced with patrolling enemies too, but this time you have no weapons - the only recourse is to run. That shit was a lot scarier. I remember trying to make my way to a locked door with a keypad (across the map) and sneaking through the hallways, when one of he enmies spotted me. I started running like a bitch, not entirely sure of where to go, but though sheer luck found the door anyway. Imagine trying to type (press with mouse) the correct 4-number key code on the panel while the music is booming down on you and the enemy is audibly running towards you. That was good stuff.
So yeah, overall:
- Overture is great, but the killable enemies are a downer
- Black Plague is the best part of the series. Some good, challenging puzzles and superb survival horror
- Requiem was bizarre: it gives closure to the series, but unlike the previous two games which tell a comprehensive story, requiem is a succession of unlinked levels where you solve a giant puzzle (basically). It's not bad, the puzzling is fun. But it's not scary at all, and it lacks a real storyline. You're provided with background and clues and given an 'ending', but that's it. So yeah, not exactly sure what they were trying to achieve with that.
The games are at heart adventure games (survival horror adventure I suppose) so they do suffer from what Derf calls 'nerd logic' at times. Like you see identical electricity boxes at two points in the game, and one only opens by smacking a rock into it, and the other needs a key (rocks won't help). Silly stuff like that. But recommended to anyone who likes the genre.