Frostbite

I know Black Plague is a direct sequel to Penumbra: Overture and I should probably review the previous game first, but guess what – I didn’t play it, nor do I intend to. Instead, I decided to simply watch the game on youtube. Pretty lame of me, I know, but imagine how much precious time I saved that way... :-) I did however install and play Black Plague demo and it kept me interested enough to wait and get myself a full game. So let’s get on with the review, shall we?

“Round one goes to the hideous Mr. Olin for effective aggressiveness, I have to admit he had me going... For a moment...” – Mike Enslin

The first twenty minutes of Black Plague are pure survival horror ecstasy. You are trapped in a dark, dirty room with no idea whatsoever who put you there or why. You walk around, do some fiddling with things you find, familiarizing yourself with the game’s innovative use of physics (you can rotate the items while holding them), solve some puzzles. It appears the gloomy location is some sort of research facility, abandoned not so long ago. Unfortunately, the fleeing scientists locked and barricaded most of the doors behind them, so making your way through the corridors won’t be easy, especially with some dangerous infected humanoids running around, while you have absolutely no weapons to defend yourself with.

Save for that no-weapons-to-defend-yourself-with part, the paragraph above is pretty much the definition of what I like in survival horror games and I have to admit, Penumbra presents it flawlessly. The rooms have all kinds of stuff lying scattered around in them, which significantly raises the realism level, the corpses look natural enough and the freaky messages scribbled on blackboards on the wall or paper notes as well as recorded on tapes signify that something has gone terribly wrong in here just hours ago. And I love barricaded doors – they always promise something extremely scary behind them, without actually telling what it is. The puzzles are clever and make good use of the physics system. Yet...

“But where is the bone-chilling terror? Show me the rivers of blood...” – Mike Enslin

The first sign that Penumbra might not be a gem I so badly wanted it to be appeared with the first enemy. I didn’t have much time to take a good look at him, but he, or it, looked really artificial, completely in contrast with the locations. The movements were artificial, so were the sounds, the textures and the polygonal shape, which reminded me of weird corpses in System Shock 2. I believe ripping off the Mass Effect’s brown corpse-like zombies wouldn’t hurt... Oh well, I thought, nothing’s perfect, besides I felt I was going to forgive Penumbra a lot more of things.

Next come the retrospective sequences which take you back to the beginning of the previous game – Penumbra: Overture. Perfect, yet again. I adore blasts from the past in games and the giant worm part scared the hell out of me. Sadly, once they finish, the game begins its steady drop from nothing short of brilliance to mediocrity. A steady flow of suspiciously empty corridors leading to different chambers. A steady flow of puzzles in each chamber. And it goes like that pretty much to the rest of the game. Now, I’m not complaining (that much), but I guess adding a little more drama – some cutscenes here and there – would be a blessing. I can see where they were going with this – Penumbra is supposed to be an adventure game with stealth elements. Both of the ingredients are there and present themselves properly. Still, if a game – any game – does not change its pace from time to time, it becomes boring: the exciting puzzles become a chore, avoiding enemies becomes a frustration and even the most hair-rising, nail-biting atmosphere goes to hell in a hand-basket. This is Penumbra’s number one sin.

The surface sequence is a little lame – I know it’s difficult to show a realistic surface covered in snow, but there are effects like blur, more snow obscuring your vision, etc. A minor detail, yet, it could have made a lot of difference. Oh, I almost forgot Clarence. God, if they meant him to be annoying, frustrating, making you want to perform lobotomy on yourself just to shut him up, then boy, did they hit the jackpot. His voice itself is aggravating, his OUVA-PRUH-NOUN-SEE-AI-SHUN melts your ears and the things he does to you and then laughs hysterically about it make you want to eat your PC’s mainboard. The big question arises: is it good of bad for the game when one of the antagonists drives you bonkers? I’ll leave the answer to you.

Finally, we come to the final sequence, let’s call it... um... displacement level. All the things I’ve mentioned so far are not terribly important, just useless merciless ranting of a guy with too high expectations, but this... This killed the game for me. The background story – the idea behind it makes sense alright, but really, if I wanted to know about the meaning and mechanisms of human existence, I probably would choose a better way than just placing the protagonist in some ridiculous stone maze and putting him to the test. Not to mention ordering my minions to attack him again and again throughout the game and then say “I’m kinda sorry” at the end.

“It’s just a room...” – Mike Enslin

Oh, yes, Penumbra – both Penumbras – have their moments. I’ll try not to spoil too much, but some of the plot-turns are really positively surprising, if not breath-taking. Meeting the she-doc, meeting Clarence in the flesh as well as meeting Red in the first game will always remain among the most memorable video game moments of all time. The graphics are impressive, the new engine useful, the atmosphere convincing. Still, for survival horror freaks like myself, it’s just not enough, especially when all it would have taken are some minor patches here and there and maybe some more script drafts. Still, the creators have done a good job and I hope their future projects, including the third Penumbra, will be a lot better. Can’t hardly wait.