Penumbra series, underrated and overlooked ?

[naturon]

Penumbra would probably be best categorized as a "horror adventure". While the horror genre is gaining some popularity*, the adventure genre hasn't recovered from its collapse in the mid- to late-90's. Telltale Games has done a pretty good job of reviving the genre, and companies like Frictional Games are bringing new life into it by maintaining the essence of the genre while defying the stale conventions that killed it. The key elements of exploration, discovery, and puzzle solving are all there, and the old "try every item with every other item" pattern has been dropped. Nice!

More to the point, the Penumbra series is definitely overlooked. I only found it due to being very bored during the Steam sale and taking a chance on it from what I saw. I've shown it to numerous friends, and so far no one has heard of it before I show it to them. One was drawn in and scared by Overture enough that he refused to continue playing after entering the hatch into the mine - and that's on my little laptop's screen with built-in speakers!

Penumbra is for people who really want to be scared by their horror games, and not just entertained by shooting zombies. Of course, that does somewhat limit the number of people who will give it a try. It's a bit bungee jumping - almost everyone is scared of heights to some degree, but there are some people who love the rush of facing that fear head-on. Penumbra takes your fears of the unknown, darkness, and more and makes you face them directly. Quite the rush!

For the record, I have a bit of a fear of spiders (which I realize is illogical, but that's how phobias work). Crawling through the narrow tunnels, hearing skittering noises, and seeing the webs in the corners was one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced in a game. Actually encountering the spiders for the first time sent me flying out of my seat and I had to wait until the next night before continuing on. And that's exactly the experience I was looking for when I bought these games.


*Arguably, the recent rise in popularity of "horror" has been driven more by action than actual horror. Left 4 Dead, Killing Floor, Resident Evil 5, and so on... good games, but not very scary, as has been discussed elsewhere in this forum.

This is a great post. Indeed, Penumbra takes your deepest fears of despair and hopelessness and exposes them to you, making you actually fearful of what the game might have in store for you later on. I don't think it's this type of fear that attracts many people to be honest. I think most people enjoy watching a slasher movie with their friends on a Saturday night and jumping when the movie pulls a carefully orchestrated scare, meant to inspire shock and start in people. They get terrified for a second or two, and then they'll be laughing the next second, embarassed at how "scared" they got in the presence of other people. I can't stand how this is always the general standard for "scariness" in the various forms of horror media. I've seen FEAR reaction videos where people would jump from their seats and flee in terror because of some ghastly apparition that appeared to them (most of the time Alma or something like that, which you don't have anything to fear from). I mean really, it's not scary.

Games that cause you to start or get a moment of shock are just taking advantage of the heightened awareness one gets when playing a game like this. They'll be concentrated playing the game and then suddenly BOO! You might even be playing at night with frail nerves and causes you slight start. This works great in moderation, but when it's the only thing your horror game has going for you, then something is seriously wrong. Penumbra is the only game I've seen that's going for this kind of real terror, and pulling it off. Inspiring real fear in the player not through orchestrated moments of shock or start but through situations that disturb the player emotionally. Just brilliant, the guys at Frictional Games deserve all the respect in the world for understanding what horror is alone. Although like I said I don't think anyone enjoys really being terrified genuinely like that. It has always struck me as unbelievably bizarre how everything that succeeds at what it's going for is always ignored for inferior alternatives.