Penumbra - Collector Pack

[pj1351]

I'm sure a good few people here have seen this truly scary game series mentioned a few times in this forum, if they don't already own some of them. Incredible atmosphere, where you can interact with almost any object with gestures (e.g. click+push/pull to open or close doors as gently or quickly as you move your hand), and the player is hopelessly outmatched in any outright confrontation with hostiles.

I myself had some trouble finding copies of them at what I considered decent prices, though the demo and Overture were a lot of scary fun. So today I opened up Steam to see what Weekend Sale was on offer today, which was World of Goo at 75% off, but pointless for me as I've already got it on WiiWare... But I did find "Penumbra Collector Pack" on Steam, which contains Overture & Black Plague Gold Edition (which has both Black Plague & Requiem), so I'd pass on the info to any here who might have seen the game mentioned but never played it before.

Now off to play Black Plague & Requiem.


P.S. The game's story order, for those who don't know, is: Overture, Black Plague, Requiem.

[DPDarkPrimus]

What are the system requirements on these?

[Stark]

I hear Steam can provide that information these days?

It's sad that Overture gets less exciting when you work out the easy way to win many of the fights - once an area is 'clear' the game loses a lot of ti's tension. Still, better than fucking FEAR.

[pj1351]

System Requirements (taken from Steam)
OS: Windows 2000/XP
Processor: 1Ghz
Memory: 256MB
Graphics: Radeon 8500/GeForce 3 (GeForce4MX not supported)

It's currently priced at US $17.99, and US $19.99 after March 13. The download version from the Penumbra official website is US $35, and that's for the "Mac & Linux only" versions.

For anybody who would like to try the demo (they're roughly 130 MB each): Overture & Black Plague

P.S. I'm currently using WinVista 32bit.

[Stark]

They work fine under Vista64 too.

[Drooling Iguana]

And 32-bit Linux. Haven't tried it with a 64-bit setup yet.

[weemadando]

I just picked up Overture off Steam, I'd previously gotten Black Plague and Requiem, but Overture hadn't been available. Now I can actually sit down one day to play them.

[RazorOutlaw]

The first FEAR took a while to do anything to me, at best it was only unnerving. When I finally had the lighting set correctly THEN it scared me, because I couldn't see into the corners anymore and that got my mind got running (hey it worked in the first SILENT HILL). I still thought it was decently scary in the end. But with Penumbra's author's comments in mind ("Scarier than FEAR") I finally installed Black Plague last night and decided to keep track of just how long it took to scare me (I had to skip Overture, it kept crashing).

With a few things in mind like no weapons, a sense of urgency, and enemies come at you ready or not (Penumbra demo) I was freaked out merely by the muffled screaming I heard in the first room. By the time I got to that little room in the ventilation shaft where someone had written "COLLAPSED" and you could hear a raspy voice speaking in some kind of godawful language I was already dreading what I might find next. It's too bad the textures seem to slide around on the walls and flicker; in a way that makes the game more scary because you're not sure if something is coming at you. On the other hand it's just distracting because even my glowstick is reduced to a bunch of green flickering lines.

Anyway vulnerability and well placed story morsels are Penumbra's strong points and FEAR's ultimate failing (and come to think of it both Condemned and System Shock 2 share the former's strong points). There's no better way to make something not scary than by putting a high-powered gun in your hand, giving you slow-motion abilities, and making anything that happens to the environment, like collapsing bridges or elevators, be completely harmless to the player. Stark might say he told everybody so a million times, and he did. Shame on me for not believing him immediately.

I'd complete the collection through Steam, but I haven't the money. :/

[Zixinus]

Oh, how I wish I had 15 euros worth of money on my bank account.

[Stark]

The first FEAR took a while to do anything to me, at best it was only unnerving. When I finally had the lighting set correctly THEN it scared me, because I couldn't see into the corners anymore and that got my mind got running (hey it worked in the first SILENT HILL). I still thought it was decently scary in the end. But with Penumbra's author's comments in mind ("Scarier than FEAR") I finally installed Black Plague last night and decided to keep track of just how long it took to scare me (I had to skip Overture, it kept crashing).

It's very much worth playing Overture - I found it more story-heavy and thus a bit more effective. I believe the original version had bugs that patches fixed. In Black Plague there seem to be more physical puzzles (like positioning objects etc) which I personally enjoy given the gesture-like control method.

I've got to the bit where I sawed off a hand sticking out of the ice to get a crowbar with G. Freeman written on it. European developers love killing him.