Overture Over

I completed Penumbra: Overture on the weekend. Now I'm working on Black Plague.

Overture was very well written. The suspense was there, the surprises were there, the terror was there. The game relied less on "jump" scares with monsters popping up out of the dark to frighten you, and more on a slowly rising tension. When you play Penumbra: Overture, the thing that paralyses you with fear is not what's happening on your monitor, it's what's going on inside your head.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth featured a sanity system. When Jack, the protagonist, was under acute mental stress, he developed mental problems. Paranoia for one. He would occasionally whisper things under his breath such as "I never should have come here," or "They're going to find me... they're going to kill me!" and "Some thing's following me."

Overture lets you develop your own real life mental illnesses. One or two parts of the game had me reduced to a quivering wreck. I may not have picked up any irrational fears (see Condemned: Criminal Origins' mannequins); but was notably difficult to turn the lights off, don my headphones, and load my last saved game.

Let's just say that if I was put through the events of Overture in real life, I would have most likely gone quite mad. Fear and suspense can put a lot of stress on a mind. Like anything else under stress, a mind can break.

The puzzles were well thought out. Not too simple, not too taxing. There was a good lack of instruction throughout the game, so you were forced to experiment in order to progress or find alternative ways of doing things. The graphics, sounds, and physics were all pretty impressive; they added to the immersion. There was no needless bloom, blurring, or filters. The visual effects that were implemented were done to enhance the atmosphere, and I think they succeeded.

There were safe areas that felt very, very unsafe. I never read any of the articles or journals found in the game without hiding in a corner or under a desk first. Even though I was sure there was nothing nearby.

If I had any complaints about the game, it would probably be that by the game's end I'd had my fill of dogs.

Black Plague has already had me whimpering like a little girl. The collector's edition should come with a straight jacket... and a pre-formatted post card allowing you to be admitted to an asylum.