Review: Penumbra: Overture

Penumbra: Overture (2007) is a horror first person adventure by small Swedish indie developer Frictional Games.

Gameplay
It's an adventure game. You read stuff. You pick up stuff. You use stuff on other stuff. Since it's a horror game, occasionally you run from stuff. There are a few "action sequences" in the game, but for the most part, it's just puzzle solving and a little stealth.

Yeah. I know. The "S" word. Luckily the stealth in Penumbra is pretty easy. The music announces enemies before you see them, and there's always plenty of shadow and cover to use. And running away is usually a viable option, even if you are spotted.

There are a couple of "action sequences" that killed me the first time through, but they were mostly good, scary deaths, so I didn't mind.

Back to the adventure game part. The puzzles in Penumbra are generally well done. Every piece of text I found was eagerly devoured for information that might help me find my way. There were a few puzzles that were contrived. Nowhere but in a game will you find a floor covered with deadly steam vents that fire in a precise pattern you must memorize to get across safely. But for the most part, I enjoyed the puzzles and the clues.

Theatrics
Penumbra takes the System Shock approach to theatrics. Pretty much everybody's dead. You're reading their logs to figure out what happened and hopefully avoid their fate. You're also piecing together a history, trying to figure out what's wrong with the place and how your long absent father (who's notes brought you there in the first place) was involved. I was a little disappointed with the amount of light shed, but Overture was supposed to be the first part of a trilogy, so I wasn't surprised.

Aesthetics
The highest compliment I can pay the game is that I was under the misconception that Frictional licensed the DooM 3 engine for Penumbra and didn't realize they hadn't until I did a little reading for this review. Some of the art assets betray it's indieness, but the lighting effects are very nice. The enemies aren't much to look at, but if you do look directly at them a fear effect washes over the screen, blurring your vision, so problem solved. :)

The music also works quite well. There are plenty of good creepy sound effects, as well. I'm not sold on random panning noises in the soundtrack. Trying to scare the player that way has always seemed cheap to me. But overall I thought the sound was well done.

Final Score
4 of 5