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Penumbra: Black Plague

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Penumbra: Black Plague is episode 2 of the Penumbra series and is developed by Frictional Games, is Black Plague as scary as its predecessor? Scarier.

Further down into the rabbit hole

I wake up in a cramped little room, the damp mattress and the stench of urine and mold is making me dizzy. The lamp in the ceiling lights up the room and small drops of water falls from the roof to the old worn concrete floor. A mans tortured screams echoes through the halls, it’s making my hair stand up all the way from the back to my neck, I can not imagine the horror of what is happening outside that cell door, I slowly reach for the handle on the door in front of me. The door is locked. It’s easier to breath now with the small sense of security behind a locked door. I tremble as I look around the room for something I can use to escape this room, an alternative route or through the locked door. I need to get out of here, I’ve got a feeling that something terrible will happen.

Penumbra: Black Plague takes place immediately after its predecessor Penumbra: Overture ends. Phillip is still looking for his father and has come even further down the rabbit hole, though this time the rabbit hole doesn’t have cute rabbits and flowers, it’s something much more terrifying lurking in the darkness.

Alone inside my mind or am I?

Unlike standard “jump out from the next corner” horror which most games have, Penumbra series relies on creating a creepy environment with the help of lighting and sound effects. It is psychological terror and, like its predecessor very scary. Instead of dark caves the game takes us to one an old abandoned underground complex. Flickering lights, crackling power lines, and claustrophobic bloody walls are something you will encounter quite frequently.

Unlike Overture, it’s no fighting at all in this game, probably due to the criticism that last game got about the weapons. The series has clearly taken a step forward and you feel completely absorbed in the game now when you are helpless without weapons. In other games in the same genre it’s standard to make the player carry a weapon, in this game you’ll have to rely on your own sense and wit to survive.

Newcomers to the series will quickly notice the game’s excellent physics engine, like its predecessor, you can lift, twist and pull the things and do this with the mouse. Very interesting and engaging way to solve the puzzles I have to say, but the cherry on the fearsome blood sundae is that the developers have created a handy tutorial that teaches you all you need to know. Very useful.

Grainy shadows, blurry movements, sharp textures and brilliant sound effects

The graphics department has taken a step up since the previous game, the game is a bit sturdier and look better than its predecessor. You will see some crisp textures, motion blur, depth of view and other visual gems like refraction if you have the power to run it. Nothing is necessary of course but it gives a little extra to the experience if you meet the recommended requirements.

Another incredibly nice and welcome feature is the support of EFX. EFX provides support for sound effects such as echo and reverb. (Reverb recreates such as a reverberation room and are not as distinct as echo, metal is dropped into the ground does not sound the same in a basement as it does in a living room). EFX is definitely a must if you have a surround sound system or headphones that supports surround sound, there’s nothing scarier than hearing the warped sound of something dropped at the end of the hall.

The few drawbacks

No game is perfect , like its predecessor, the game has “save points” and there is nothing worse in a horror game as when you have to run back through the level in order to save. Luckily, there’s a small change that can be done in a config file so that the game allows a quicksave feature. (save f4, f5 load).

The second drawback is that the game suffers from a lot of bugs, anyway, which I encountered in my playthrough. Before you start it is important that you update your game to the latest patch or else ATI users have a difficult time with flickering textures, etc. During my playthrough, the game crashed many times and all those times was when I would move to another part of the game through a load time.

It was mainly caused by the face that I had not done everything I should have on that particular level or area, resulting in a crash of the program when It tried to take me to another place. It was usually always resolved by doing other things on one’s “to-do” list in the game, and then try again. However, the game constantly crashed at one point in the game which meant that I could not take continue the game, to solve the problem, I looked for save files online that would get me into the other side of the door and thus letting me continue the game. But this shows that despites the updates and patches, it is an unstable engine with much needed bugtesting in it’s development.

That said, I must also say that most crashes in the game should have been fixed in the latest patch, but it may simply be that the game isn’t compatible with my 64-bit machine, and basically there is nothing to say that my experience of bugs will happen to others. I found very little information about it on the official forums.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that Penumbra: Black Plague suffers from bugs and a somewhat irritating save system, the game is still incredibly good. It has everything you would want from a horror adventure, it has an engaging story, the game has interesting puzzles, good voice acting, drama, and above all, incredibly creepy environments. I recommend anyone interested in the horror genre to play this game. I have definitely played worse games and they had a bigger budget. So if you have a boring weekend in front of you, or simply have a desire to play a good game, take a look at the Penumbra series, they may be budget games, but they are worth gold in horror-experience.

Tags: PC-game, Penumbra, Review