I review Penumbra: Overture

Video edition on YouChoob.

I don't think there's an emotion in the human mind more powerful than fear. I can't really say there's one more treacherous either. This is probably because fear is a reflex that tries to stop us from doing the unsafe. Many horror games don't seem to grasp the basis of fear. For some reason, though, many still frighten a very large group of people, perhaps because those people are pansies, often resorting to silly hallucinations of little girls or instances where monsters jump out of holes in the wall. They often make the protagonist too tough for their own good. One single monster in Doom 3 or Dead Space can never jump out fast enough to actually cause you to lose something you really wouldn't like to lose. The little girl in F.E.A.R. (that's First Encounter Assault Recon, not the emotion) does give you the feeling of being watched sometimes, but never actually tries to harm you, and she's a fucking little girl, so what. I was scared by neither of these silly clichés.

Survival horror is on the decline from good old terror, being more about startling the player. People can get angry and retaliatory about that comment, but screw you, you're all wimps. I, on the other hand, am happy to not have a soul. Next to nothing at all scares me. This is why I am incredibly picky with horror games, and like a slice of cake after a year without any dessert, Penumbra has refreshed me so. Fear, the aforementioned response to any unsafe stimulus is very present because, in Penumbra, nearly every byte, nearly every single bit of the game is entirely unsafe.

Penumbra: Overture is the beginning of the trilogy of survival horror titles chronicling the massively unsafe adventures of Philip Buchanon. It opens the series on the travel to a place in uninhabited Northern Greenland, an area marked on an odd map sent to you by your father, a supposedly deceased man who left your mother before you were born. Intrigued by the possible learning of your father's fate, you begin a glorious trek to find shelter nearby, only to become trapped, alone in the darkness a few hundred feet below ground.

Overture is a mixture of adventure and stealth gameplay. It alternates between the two styles constantly. Every actual plot event that occurs is fueled by the solving of puzzles. These puzzles are many times normally about finding various facsimiles of keys for various facsimiles of doors, but occasionally a few show up that require you to be a little dextrous and are very unique.

Between these, or sometimes during these puzzles, the stealth and horror part kicks in full-throttle. The game gets its horror by not protecting you. Between individual areas where puzzles are prompted are very large hub levels, these vast, hollow, long networks of corridors. Getting to the other side is a puzzle in and of itself, as the remains of some sort of force of watchdogs patrol the halls. Getting from point A to point B is focused around stealth and avoidance of these vile things. This requires dexterity and is incredibly tense.

It has some faults, though. You're given some tools for environmental manipulation that takes place in some puzzles, such as a hammer or pickaxe, but in a pinch these can be used as weapons. Unfortunately, going in and just killing the bad guys with these can become tedious. People who are used to shooters or horror games being about combat will do this, and it's not their fault. They won't recognize that sneaking past is an option, and will use it more to sneak up behind and repeatedly bash something until it dies. There's nothing stopping anyone from doing this, and it's a big problem that can take a lot away from the horror element. So I prescribe that anyone who thinks about using the game's combat plays on the hard difficulty level, which makes the combat harder and less effective.

That's not to say combat is completely useless, as there are some parts where you'll probably need to fight for your life, or use the environment to stun an enemy. It's just that in these parts, it's very sad that the controls for swinging an object are rather stiff, but the difficulty of this sort of thing does make you feel like the scrawny English physics professor that you are.

One of Penumbra's unique assets is its focus on physical interaction. The physics engine is superb and nearly everything that you'd expect to have realistic physical properties has realistic physical properties. You can pick up, push, or nudge any item in the environment depending on its design. Certain objects such as doors or drawers must be opened by swinging the mouse, and valves must be turned by moving the mouse in a circle. Though it sounds miniscule, this helps give the environment a much more realistic feel, comparative to nearly all other games which simply have you press the use key to interact with the environment. This isn't just for show, though. Puzzles often make use of objects all around the environments. Nearly anything can be thrown as well, meaning physics can play a large role in combat if you don't have your pickaxe at the ready.

The events of the game are woven together through a rather tiny but great narrative. Overall, your objective in this episode is simply to get to a mysterious man and free him with the promise of I'm not sure what. In return, he gives you information about where to go. The relationship between player and objective is strengthened, however, by the writing. Not only is this man shrouded in a mystery by his distance, but he is also this poetic and completely insane personality he carries. The way you are forced to make friends with him draws you in with no turning back.

As if that is not enough the environment is also very well-designed and stories are told about it. Notes and diaries can be found strewn throughout the mines that document characters that you will never meet in-game and their downfall to whatever evil has come over them. Many of these diaries are very long and require a few minutes for a good read through, but none of your time is wasted because they all provide backstory and entertain with amazingly fleshed-out characters. The story remains meaty because of this until the very last drop of gameplay.

Story alone doesn't drive you through Overture, though. Neither does gameplay. The atmosphere of the game is absolutely superb. It's possibly so rich and thick that you could run a chainsaw through it and it would still be a daunting task to cut it open. This is heavily in part to the absolutely incredible sound design and music. From footsteps to monster sounds to the thing behind you banging into walls, everything is real and works perfectly. Music from the insanely great composer Mikko Tarmia is put to good use, and it's full of panicky, tense melodies and roaring, violent percussion that works so well.

Graphics in the game don't stand up to the superb audio, however. Textures are pretty low-resolution and some models lack plenty of detail. But the engine on which the game is built has some very nice techniques for things like lighting and motion blur. Both of these features help to make a very dark and warped atmosphere where the low resolution textures do not. Especially since the game's often so dark that you can't see the flaws for the most part anyway.

Penumbra: Overture is an absolutely superb horror game that makes use of a dark and mysterious tale and a bleak, lonesome atmosphere. Coupled with this is the superb adventure gameplay and an amazingly terrifying stealth mechanic. Even despite its flaws which occur under certain circumstances, there is a world to explore and there are pants to be shat. It all leads up to a very distinct and emotional ending carrying you into the even darker land of the sequel, Black Plague.