Requiem review *dont read if not completed*

[simosimo]

I got the 3rd installment and was ready to play, apparently this new helping of penumbra was puzzle based, which I was kind of looking foward to, I always felt the hostile environment, while a good tension builder, was kind of annoying, I always felt 'urrrgh' something is there. So I was happy to plod along through each level without silly zombies beatin on me.

Puzzle-wise I thought it was pretty good, some I really blitzed through, some took me AGES (The level with the fire boiler with the valves and acid), and some I went through gentle pace , which was quite enjoyable. I can't help but think I cheated some of the puzzles. On the level with the gravity pads and the forcefield (and exploding ketchup!) I managed to get all the way to the top where the portal exit was, before figuring out I had to use the delivery ports and such. Yes...I dragged them black boxes all the way up to just to climb stuff I couldn't reach.

I couldn't help feel that this game felt like Portal : "Industrial mindfuck" expansion pack. I knew it was penumbra but it felt like it was in another disjointed universe, which was a shame because I was

hoping for some simple continuity. Much like Overture to Black Plague, it went straight off.

Toward the end of the game on the final level where the boulders were, where you had to blow it up with the explosive can, I thought it could of been the turning point. I knew the game kept hinting at escaping (the outside level). I originally thought the boulders were in the cave of the first game ( I remember a blockade of boulders right at the beginning somewhere). I got real hyped up expecting the mine to be behind them rocks and to have a really satisfying trek back through the caves of the first game and to escape out, that would of rounded off the penumbra experience excellently. But instead we got returned to the Shelter entrance...and then burned (With red?). Not cool, but not bad...just another penumbra cliff hanger. I feel if you did the escape route I mentioned a minute ago, I would feel happy that there would be no more games. But the real ending is STILL open, and even though there wont be a 4th game...I want there to be because the ending didn't feel final.

Performance really irritated me, lots of stuttering, I fell to my death lots of times just from freezing. Some levels were really laggy, for no reason too.

So yeah, While the puzzles were good, it felt like a different game. I was hoping for some continuous level crawling, but the portal system at the end of each level (ala Portal or Doom 1 even) was kinda poo.

It didn't feel like the main guy gave a shit too. I remember in the first game he was like 'ooh shit' at everything and there was always something to read (Dropped journals and Phils own personal notes), but in this game he's just ploddin along like he don't give a shit. He should of commented more.

The other guy talking to you felt like a pointless addon, who the hell was he? I'm glad red returned too, always nice to see a familiar face in this dump.


Overall...Nice to play penumbra again.

-Glad there wasn't hostiles about, but INTENDED hostiles could of been used (walls shaking, roars). The first game did that alot and it was hella scary. Not seeing is far more scarier than seeing.

-Nice puzzles, each have their own range of difficulty

- Crap performance for some reason

- More psychological input (personal notes, comments, 'what the hell is that!' moments, intended enemies but not actually visible (Wall bangs, shakes, door bangs etc) I felt like I was 'Player one' instead of Philip the shit scared guy who stupidly went to a hatch.

- Ending could of been so much better / deeper

-Portal?

7/10 : Fair....lost some of it's 'penumbraness', could of been much better, but grateful for there being a 3rd game!

[Penumbra]

Yes! I agree completly. I didn't feel like I was 'in the game'. I remember in Overture, Philip freaked out just when he heard the dog and said a bunch of stuff. Not to menchone every time Red said something to him, Philip would say his own opinion about it.

And yeah, I have no idea who the heck Dr. Emrons (or whatever) was. What was the point in him even being there!?! They should of made it a person who was actually familiar, like Swanson or maybe Clarence, not some random guy who wrote like 1 note before.

Which reminds me, I'm also dissapointed that there was only 1 guy who left notes (or talking books?) behind. I allways liked to READ notes myself and for there to be several notes by different people, cuz there's allways 2 sides to every story.

And of cource, the whole portal/dream world thing ruined it for me. It pulled me out of the game a bunch, because it was a contant reminder that the game wasn't reality. And metal orb things? Why couldn't we just use key codes or a crow bar or something else?

In the end, I like the game, but they could of make it a whole lot better.

[Tommy Gun]

mhmmmm. People are calling requiem

Portal: Penumbra edition.

still, the game had its moments.

[jo291]

Penumbra Wrote:And yeah, I have no idea who the heck Dr. Emrons (or whatever) was. What was the point in him even being there!?! They should of made it a person who was actually familiar, like Swanson or maybe Clarence, not some random guy who wrote like 1 note before.

dr.emines is a person in a audio tape early in black plague.

[Penumbra]

No, that was the other guy. Turns out Dr. Emines is the infected zombie that u locked in the freezer.

[Tommy Gun]

Penumbra Wrote:No, that was the other guy. Turns out Dr. Emines is the infected zombie that u locked in the freezer.

Correction - a computer cooler.

[Petike]

jo291 Wrote:dr.emines is a person in a audio tape early in black plague.

The "cassette recording zombie-chow guy" was an older scientist with a New England accent, called Eloff Carpenter, if I remember well... :-P

[Kedjane]

I think Reqiuem was OK.
It didn't end the Penumbra series in any way, though. Instead it felt like an odd excuse to make a puzzle game. The Penumbra design is there just so they won't have to make up a new universe for this new puzzle game.
Each game in the series have brough a few disappointments, Frictional still seems to be learning. Now they've blown their chance of making something great out of the Penumbra series though (it pretty much blew at the end of Black Plague, anyways).
In future projects they really need to work on the story progession. There isn't anything wrong with the graphics, sounds and physics though.
I just hope that Frictional Games gather up and make their next (second) series a hit. I think they should stick very close to Penumbra in terms of gameplay (and the entire series have been graphically stunning), and keep some story elements. I'd definately make it more action oriented, something Condemned-like.

[simosimo]

I agree, the whole mine shaft section of overture ,for me created so many mental thoughts, 'where am i, how big is this place, why is this/that here/there, how long does it go down, what's that noise, oh god i hope there's nothing in this next room' and so many more. The developers control what the universe is (and that depends on the writers I suppose). I was captivated and legitimately shit scared throughout the whole game. Finding the shelter at the end made the mind think even more 'woo whats this, whats down there'

getting clubbed on the head and having the game end was..cool and potentially bad, one because there's something down there, two, because we dont know what DID hit us ( at the time).

The first section of BP still held the overture scaryness because we had no idea what was going on, once first contact was made with the enemy that pretty much stripped down the scaryness to cheap-tension I call it. Gone are the mental images, and now it's just a goose chase with hostile-for-no-reason-or-explanation enemies. Kind of killed it for me. BP didn't have that scary feeling, well it did, but a different kind, mainly because I didn't want to die from the silly 'infekted mooootants'. It could of been so much more, so much deeper, but that's down to the writers of course.

Requeim was ok too, nice that them stupid monsters are gone, but just felt stripped down even more, shame penumbras over

[Kedjane]

Yeah, exactly. The whole idea of entering via a pretty primitive mine was great. At first it would seem like just a mine, but then you'd realize it was much more. The Shelter at the end was like the peak, then you really went like "Woah! What's going to happen next?". I was expecting 50% 2006 Tech Demo and 50% Lost Hatch. I was hoping so hard for Black Plague to revisit some Tech Demo areas. When you finally came into the Shelter though, there wasn't a lot of variety or surprises at all.
Sure, it had to be a practical place, some organization lives down there afterall, but there wasn't anything that made me go "Woah, theese Archaic guys are really the shit!". No impressive computers, no large monuments, no huge tuurngait temples. At least getting to enter the tuurngait ruins for a short while would had made Black Plague a whole lot better.

Story-wise Black Plague kinda spiraled outwards in the end. The infected, the inuit spirits and all that really ruined it for me. When you found your dead father you just yawned and went "Oh... is that my father?" instead of some huge emotional scene. That was probably the biggest mistake apart from the ending: afterall, Howard was the very reason you went to Iceland in the first place.
Reqiuem was the final bolt in the coffin, sorta. The first ruins were kind of interesting, suggesting that the ancestors worshiped the large rock worms and such but after that there wasn't anything really worth noting down there.

I do wonder though if they drew inspiration from the Submachine series, half a dozen online puzzle games. Reqiuem reminded me of them quite a lot. You're in this strange realm where nothing really makes sense and have to solve strange puzzles in order to escape odd locations. You also come across some similar ruins in the Submachine series.