YouGamers.com

Reviews

Penumbra: Overture - Episode 1

Dark tales await

For the sake of comparison, Penumbra: Overture is an atmospheric game in the vein of the Resident Evil series. Departing from the save-your-rations gameplay of that horror title, Penumbra is less of an action and more of a puzzle game, a la Myst. To round out the cursory description, the gameplay is delivered in first-person fashion with a few unique twists. The most obvious departure from first-person mechanics is the implementation of an interactive mode. Toggling this on freezes the viewport and allows interaction with the scene via a hand-shaped cursor. While the pointer is available in the regular view, the interactive mode allows for a more fine-grained interface with the environment. You'll perform actions such as opening desk drawers and moving bookshelves. Nothing is done with a simple click, however – the mechanics actually require that you click and pull the mouse back to open a door, for instance.

This particular control style is unique and refreshing, until it comes time for combat: using any of the game's weapons is a real chore. Having to click and pull back the mouse, then throw it forward to swing a hammer is tedious and awkward. It's nigh impossible to execute the required motion multiple times in succession, making combat a frustrating experience. While the desire to conform to a high degree of realism must be appreciated, a simple click to use a weapon would suffice. When a gameplay mechanic leads to repeated episodes of frustration for the player, it's time to move in another direction. Ditto for the lack of a crosshair option in the normal view; the center of the screen is the focus area for triggering interactive hot spots in the environment, so why make the player fumble to highlight an object? On the whole, though, the control system is innovative, and I found performing most actions to be intuitive.

Interacting with the environment is key to the gameplay. To this end, Penumbra: Overture uses the Newton Game Dynamics physics system to replicate real-life physics in the game world. While not as advanced as the Havok-based engine found in many contemporary games, the actions are real enough to not remove the player from the world of the game. From the obligatory crate-stacking exercises to rolling boulders, there was never a time when the physics engine hampered the gameplay. Interaction always felt "right". Of course, I was able to perform super-human feats of strength – such as throwing an oil drum across a room – but such exaggerated physics are to be expected. Combined with the unique control scheme, the physics engine serves to cement the game's interactive nature.

Box stacking - a key element in any FPS.

This must plug in somewhere...

Unfortunately, the sole enemy in the game is poorly done. Standing out if only due to the very few animated models the game offers, the feral dogs are low-polygon likenesses of the real thing (we've all seen a zombie dog or two, right?). The AI exhibited by these infected canines is so poor it's laughable. They would travel the same path over and over, and despite obvious signs of my presence – such as a flashlight beam or running footsteps – the creatures were only stirred once I stepped inside an invisible but obvious detection boundary. The animation even had the dogs skating across the floor surface, reminiscent of poorly-coded AI bots from Unreal and Quake. I witnessed more than one dog fall through the floor in a particular level, an indication of clipping issues with models' boundary boxes. The Penumbra tech demo promised more detailed and believably repulsive creatures, but the final game disappoints greatly in this regard.

Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5

Related Stuff

Tags