Better pacing, gameplay, and story than Penumbra: Overture. Not as good as Amnesia but hey it's getting there!
Penumbra Black Plague is an excellent, if slightly rough horror game.
The tone of this game is a unique mix of horror and black comedy, the latter due in large part to your parasitic companion Clarence, who truly brings a lot of life into the game. The entire cast is excellent, and complements the setting greatly.
The setting is interesting, varied, and fun to explore. While I took issue with Penumbra Overture for being very repetitive, in this game it felt like I was constantly discovering something new.
Although not nearly as polished as Amnesia or SOMA, I would still highly recommend playing through Black Plague.
The DLC, Requiem, is a decent if not terribly interesting puzzle game. If nothing else, it's a fun bonus to the main game's story.
The tone of this game is a unique mix of horror and black comedy, the latter due in large part to your parasitic companion Clarence, who truly brings a lot of life into the game. The entire cast is excellent, and complements the setting greatly.
The setting is interesting, varied, and fun to explore. While I took issue with Penumbra Overture for being very repetitive, in this game it felt like I was constantly discovering something new.
Although not nearly as polished as Amnesia or SOMA, I would still highly recommend playing through Black Plague.
The DLC, Requiem, is a decent if not terribly interesting puzzle game. If nothing else, it's a fun bonus to the main game's story.
This sequel improves on the formula that would one day revolutionize the horror genre, for better or for worse.
The plot is interesting and it keeps you engaged throughout this very short horror game.
The ending is way too esoteric though, holy shit.
The plot is interesting and it keeps you engaged throughout this very short horror game.
The ending is way too esoteric though, holy shit.
This review contains spoilers
As the sequel, or basically continuation of the first game I'm going to be legit with you here this review will be a bit shorter. The combat and puzzles are way better, the story is pretty damn tight, and overall I enjoyed the game. I felt it was more of the same but just way better and no stupid combat physics thing which hey hey I'm ok with. My main thing I guess I could have a problem. I still stick by my opinion that this should've just been one game and that's it but for what it's worth I liked it. I'm going to be trying out Requiem here next but I heard thats not good so I don't know. Out of all of the games being remade now I wouldn't mind seeing a remake or a mod that just combines all the games into one. Also fu ck Clarence, I hope he gets shot by a firing squad, hit by a bunch of cars, pi ssed on, beaten up, and strapped down in a chair while being covered in flesh eating fire ants. I hate him, and you'll understand why when you play this. I get that the whole point is to hate him, but I'll be legit him and his comments kind of distracted from the atmosphere I felt I was supposed to be having. But regardless of my personal vendetta against Clarence yeah, this game is good. I like, I will recommend.
Pros:
Plot is still interesting
I like the ending
Thrilling
Puzzles are also still interesting
Cons:
There's a sort of zombie creature, they're cool but they weren't really "scary"
Clarence can eat a fat one
It was good, I still needed help from friends but I still enjoyed it a good bit. I forgot to mention in the last review that it's like 9.99 for the game, so I'd just say like wait for a deal to get all of them. But I would recommend getting them for sure and I think a lot of things really shine through and you can tell the potential for the Amnesia series and what came about. I think it would be interesting if they came out with a Penumbra 2 as well. I guess I'll just leave it like that I don't know what else to say.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Pros:
Plot is still interesting
I like the ending
Thrilling
Puzzles are also still interesting
Cons:
There's a sort of zombie creature, they're cool but they weren't really "scary"
Clarence can eat a fat one
It was good, I still needed help from friends but I still enjoyed it a good bit. I forgot to mention in the last review that it's like 9.99 for the game, so I'd just say like wait for a deal to get all of them. But I would recommend getting them for sure and I think a lot of things really shine through and you can tell the potential for the Amnesia series and what came about. I think it would be interesting if they came out with a Penumbra 2 as well. I guess I'll just leave it like that I don't know what else to say.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
A nice upgrade over the last game in terms of puzzles, survival and combat. Now, the combat is completely useless and you can only run and hide, which increases the difficulty ten fold. In Overture, you can maul every single enemy that stands in your way if you master the combat; can't say the same here.
More memorable moments than Overture, writing ties nicely into Overture and Clarence is great. Less atmoshperic to me (probably because I know BP better) and the story nosedives at the end, but I still really like BP.
While their best titles were still to come, Black Plague further cemented Frictional's reputation for knowing how to make good horror. Despite its abrupt ending, it is a flat improvement in all departments over the previous entry. More than a decade later Black Plague is still highly enjoyable and easily recommendable as a classic of late 2000s PC horror.
[Full review at https://bluedemonarchive.blogspot.com/2022/01/review-penumbra-black-plague.html ]
[Full review at https://bluedemonarchive.blogspot.com/2022/01/review-penumbra-black-plague.html ]
Much better than Overture in every single way
I wish Clarence would shut up
I'd say this second entry in the series is, overall, a fair bit better than Penumbra: Overture. There were a lot of irritating gameplay decisions in Overture (terrible combat, horrible UI when using tools, improperly contextualised 'hints') which are straight up removed in Black Plague. But it does at times feel like the devs didn't really make any attempt to replace these removals with anything. Long story short, Black Plague is much more of a walking sim than Overture or other games in the genre like Amnesia. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I definitely prefer it this way than to how Overture felt the need to pepper the map with dozens of copy of the same two irritating enemies, but it does hurt the immersion a bit in Black Plague when it isn't very good at hiding just how infrequently you are in danger.
Aesthetically I'd also say Black Plague is an improvement on Requiem. The overall theme is more interesting (to me at least) and much much more varied; gone are the endless carbon copy mineshafts of Requiem, and the different parts of the facility in Black Plague actually feel like distinct and different places. I also found that the part of the Penumbra story told in Black Plague was somewhat more engaging than in Requiem. Requiem seemed to be focused on desperately coming up with reasons that the player character got himself into this mess to begin with (and frankly not coming up with many good reasons at all...), whereas Black Plague is about him trying to get out of it and is inherently more relatable. There are also more characters and generally more moving parts to the story, and one of the plot twists caught me completely off-guard in a good way. I was unsure about Clarence at first (the character you spend the most time interacting with), but I grew to appreciate his presence over time; he can be pretty annoying, but he gives this game a certain life and character that was less present in Requiem.
Black Plague, however, loses some points for me for its ending. It sucks. The last challenges / trials / whatever you want to call them are absolute nonsense, and completely tonally dissonant with the rest of the game. And this extends to the ending of (this part) of the story as well. Everything just becomes a bit farfetched and silly right at the close, and it definitely lost me a bit. But right up until the tonal shift (which is very near the end) I found this to be a pretty good time. It's another 'Amnesia with less stuff in it' game, but with almost all of the actively bad stuff from Overture stripped out, and as a consequence I feel I can recommend this one somewhat more.
Aesthetically I'd also say Black Plague is an improvement on Requiem. The overall theme is more interesting (to me at least) and much much more varied; gone are the endless carbon copy mineshafts of Requiem, and the different parts of the facility in Black Plague actually feel like distinct and different places. I also found that the part of the Penumbra story told in Black Plague was somewhat more engaging than in Requiem. Requiem seemed to be focused on desperately coming up with reasons that the player character got himself into this mess to begin with (and frankly not coming up with many good reasons at all...), whereas Black Plague is about him trying to get out of it and is inherently more relatable. There are also more characters and generally more moving parts to the story, and one of the plot twists caught me completely off-guard in a good way. I was unsure about Clarence at first (the character you spend the most time interacting with), but I grew to appreciate his presence over time; he can be pretty annoying, but he gives this game a certain life and character that was less present in Requiem.
Black Plague, however, loses some points for me for its ending. It sucks. The last challenges / trials / whatever you want to call them are absolute nonsense, and completely tonally dissonant with the rest of the game. And this extends to the ending of (this part) of the story as well. Everything just becomes a bit farfetched and silly right at the close, and it definitely lost me a bit. But right up until the tonal shift (which is very near the end) I found this to be a pretty good time. It's another 'Amnesia with less stuff in it' game, but with almost all of the actively bad stuff from Overture stripped out, and as a consequence I feel I can recommend this one somewhat more.