A creepy and dark adventure into the darkness.
Obsession can be dangerous. Its consuming nature causes otherwise rational people to spiral headlong into some bad situations. Take Phillip, the main character in Penumbra: Overature. After receiving a note from his long lost father -- 30 years lost actually -- telling him specifically not to come find him, his slide into obsession over the occurrences surrounding his patriarch's disappearance takes him down a one way track to despair and dementia in the depths of a mine in Greenland. While the story presentation can be clumsy, along with some of the game's controls, what's here is a pretty good effort from a small developer creating the first episode in an adventure series that has a lot of potential for future creepouts.
It's a strange mood that immediately grabs hold when loading up this first episode of Penumbra. Phillip's confusion becomes your own, which from one point of view helps you forget your own life and step into his shoes, but from another point of view simply comes off as incomplete storytelling. Yes, Phillip has been wondering about his father for years but why would he pick up his life and go on what was likely to be a one way trip to Greenland in the search of answers? Why would he develop an unnatural obsession even in the light of incredible danger? Even a quick intro about a useless life unfulfilled because of questions about his father's disappearance would have served as a more grounding introduction.
I guess it's just a matter of no turning back, even when undead dogs, spiders, and gigantic Tremors-like worms start attacking. Deeper and deeper the rabbit hole goes, where it stops, nobody knows. Once Phillip jumps into that hatch, his old life ended.
Whether you appreciate the mood and themes or not, Penumbra does have some interesting mechanics for a PC adventure game. Developer Frictionless has utilized the mouse much like the Wiimote is being used in many of the games on Nintendo's new console. Mouse over a interactive item and the cursor will turn to a hand allowing control of that object in a physics based environment. Simply click to grab and then pull, push, turn, or pick up the objects to manipulate them. Every door needs to be opened with a push or a pull and many other objects have the same effect. In a lot of cases, these simple physics rules create some interesting gameplay puzzles and solutions. I can't shake the feeling that I wish there was more of that, but what is there is pretty good for the first episode of an unproven adventure series from a small development house. None of this is totally new, but it is a welcome change for an adventure title.
All of the game takes place in a full 3D environment which allows freedom of movement, unlike many slideshow adventure titles. It helps with the immersion though the dated graphics engine doesn't. While some of the environments have a creepy "there's no way out, what the hell am I doing here?" type of feel to them, they're technically way behind the PC game average. Enemies are pretty poorly modeled and environmental textures aren't much better. It makes me wonder if the reason you never see any humans dead or alive (aside from making the player feel alone) is that they didn't have the technical budget for it. The darkness of the environment helps set the mood and add some scares thanks to the game's minimal, yet creepy soundwork, but the series could definitely use a bigger technical budget.
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