"A Disappointing End To A Promising Series"

(SPOILER WARNING!!!!!)

Released in 2008, Penumbra: Black Plague , (the second title in the now cancelled " Penumbra trilogy") ended up being a giant disappointment to me. All three major positive aspects from the original game suffered setbacks (atmosphere, puzzles, and story), with only minor improvements in textures and lighting being obvious from the get-go.

The atmosphere was great at the beginning, as you wake up in a bloodstained, "abandoned" underground facility that the player discovers deep within the mine from the first title, Penumbra: Overture . However, not even an hour into the game and you run into its biggest flaw: Clarence. This abomination of a "character" is literally stuck in your head until the rest of the game, and makes horrible jokes during some of the scariest or most emotional moments! A deformed, horrifically deranged monster who is about to tear you apart? Clarence screams in your ear, "KILL THIS MONKEY HE'S RIGHT HERE!" Finally finding your dad, the main reason Philip started his journey, only to discover that he has committed suicide because of his dreadful actions as head of the facility? Clarence chortles, "HAHA THE OLD BLOKE OFFED HIMSELF!" It breaks all level of emotion and seriousness within this title, and single-handedly ruins the game. He is one of the most terribly written characters I have ever come across in my time playing video games, and makes me wonder just what in the hell the writers over at Frictional thought he would accomplish for the experience. While this negative is definitely a major one in this title, it contains many other glaring issues with the puzzle sections of the game as well as the story itself.

The puzzles are, for the most part, the same that were in Penumbra: Overture , if not more common. Yet there are no more interactions with the pickaxe and hammer because combat was removed entirely from this game. This sounds good at first, but removes a large part of interactivity with the environment as well as overall immersion. This disappointed me heavily, as I expected an improvement upon the original system rather than the complete removal of it. One particular alchemy puzzle was nice, though it is much more refined in Amnesia: The Dark Descent , and definitely isn't enough to pull this game from its poor existence.

Finally, the story was completely rushed and torn to shreds. Apparently some issues with Frictional's previous publisher, Lexicon Entertainment, prevented a third game being developed, so it became apparent that the game had to tie up a lot of loose ends with the plot despite only having one year separated from the previous game. The characters are lackluster, even downright atrocious (**** you Clarence). The ending is also very cryptic and doesn't conclude in a clear manner at all, and even after reading a plot synopsis, it still left a bad taste in my mouth. The game also is much shorter, as the other title (disregarding idle time) took me around 6 hours, whereas this title barely took me barely 4 hours to finish. An expansion, Penumbra: Requiem was released later in 2008, but was more of a puzzle game that added little to the game's plot than a full-on sequel. Therefore, the Penumbra series was killed off, leaving fan mods to deal with continuing an abandoned story.

Overall, I hate having to Not Recommend this game, because it does tie up the plot of the series. But it just has too many glaring issues to ignore, and ultimately drops the ball on what could've been a fantastic series. Frictional Games would go on to make Amnesia: The Dark Descent , one of the greatest horror games of all time, but I am still disappointed at the lack of finality for their first series. An apparent fan-made "sequel" is now available through a mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent , titled Penumbra: Necrologue , but I still would have liked to see where Frictional could have officially taken Philip for the last leg of his journey.

Final Verdict: 3/10 (Poor)

The almost conclusive episode of Penumbra—until Requiem's controversial release—, Black Plague, fulfills the implications of Overture as an introductory chapter by developing the narrative threads to their Lovecraftian ends. Frictional Games realize a horrific environment of infections and insanity within an ancient, clandestine organization's secret research base to contemplate through the mind's manipulation a mirror of humankind's own selfishness as it relates to the alien findings within this base. One scene, specifically, speaks to this end with the game's only "combat" sequence—devastating, to say the least—and the introduction of Clarence, albeit annoying at times, intentionally so, evokes greater depth to the game's themes. The puzzles in Black Plague are as good as Overture, the horror and the monsters as well, but the narrative intrudes in aspects which, by providing more information, lose the implications and unknown aspects of Overture. On the whole, Black Plague remains a great game and a good, somewhat rushed conclusion. Unfortunate to some, Requiem remains as the true ending.

A huge improvement over Overture, Black Plague provides a lot of answers to the open-ended nonsense Overture called its story. It somehow learns to take itself a bit less seriously while also being definitely scarier, with Clarence serving as some expert comic relief who still manages to pull the horror reins fantastically here and there. Also a significant improvement in puzzles, even there still were a few that made no sense and sucked. They understood how garbage the combat was in the first game, and their response to that was to remove it altogether, which came together to great success, with the Tuurngait Infected feeling absolutely horrifying to get chased down by, and from that making the couple actual “combat” sections feel pretty fantastic to engage with.

The whole old lost mine aesthetic unfortunately gets traded out for more run-of-the-mill abandoned laboratories, but it still works great in my opinion. Black Plague definitely feels like a true predecessor of what was to come in a couple years with the first Amnesia, with the focus on hiding from your enemies instead of engaging them in combat.

The story still poses some huge open-ended insinuations that feel way too huge to wrap your head around, but at least it was way less lackadaisical than Overture’s story progression.

(Continued from my review of Overture)
Black Plague’s story picks up immediately from where Overture’s left off, but surprisingly, that’s just about the only thing that carries over. There aren’t any more wolves to bash, and in fact, there are no enemies to fight at all, combat has been replaced with a total focus on stealth and frantic escape from enemies. The puzzles are more involved than ever, and if you had gotten used to Overture’s blatant problem spaces, it’s easy to get stuck on the new puzzles that are elegantly built into the environment. The story is better, the locations are better, this game is an upgrade to Overture in almost every possible way. The notable exception is how this is the first time Frictional Games would experiment with a character who constantly chats with the protagonist, but it wasn’t particularly effective. Done well, you get memorable characters like System Shock’s SHODAN, but Black Plague’s narrator character sounds like a poor interpretation of Mark Hamill’s Joker, and disrupts the lonely atmosphere rather than adding to it. However, other than that one little problem, this game really is fantastic. Again, it’s not as polished as Amnesia, but all the same good ideas are here, and a few of the bad ideas are notably absent. So, the question is if I think Black Plague is good enough to be worth playing Overture for, and to that I would definitely say yes, at least for the people interested in this style of horror already. It’s a great ending to the story that Overture set up, and I was pleased with how all the details came together in the end. However, didn’t I say this was intended to be a trilogy? Well, let’s get into that in the review of the final entry of the series, the expansion pack called Requiem.

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.

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 gameplay in this is a solid improvement on Overture, however it was a completely underwhelming ending to all of the mysteries built up previously. The one thing this game had going for it (the great atmosphere) is completely destroyed by a ridiculously annoying, constantly talking invisible "companion" who serves absolutely no purpose in the story by the end. His dialogue tries to be witty, and I think he was intended to be comedic-relief but is never funny (which wouldn't really change much anyway) and is usually just constantly insulting and prodding you. It is impossible to enjoy the positive aspects of this game with Clarence talking non-stop. The puzzles are still mostly a slog, but enemy design is better than the first game in many ways. The graphics and controls are noticeable improvement as well, and it's starting to feel a lot closer to Amnesia, but all in all it was still just an absolute waste of great ideas in of itself. I'm really happy that Frictional took things in the right direction after this game and developed their formula with all positives and negatives of Penumbra in mind.

Penumbra walked so Amensia could run. Amnesia is a completely separate story but the parallels between the two games are unavoidable. The sound design is the same as every Frictional Games title, simply perfect. The decision to ditch combat from last Penumbra paid off BIG TIME, the story is very interesting and its resolution is both perfect and quite existential. I will remember my playthrough of Penumbra for a long, long time. The setting of a research station from a near past hidden under Greenland's icy exterior feels great, scary, claustrophobic, and sometimes very melancholic or even nostalgic. The game also features quite diverse environments for how short it is. It pretty much eliminated all the problems I had with the previous game. As far as the bad goes, some of the puzzles are just incomprehensible for a normal, functioning human being. Really hoping this gets a remake of some kind in the future.

Part 2 of a 3 part series and much better than Overture. The QoL gameplay updates and overall atmosphere of Black Plague is much better than Overture. More tension, more fear, and better plot. Being yanked around by Clarence was more enthralling than being guided by Red. You can't fight back in this game like you could in Overture which introduces the classic patrolling and chasing monsters. Which means you lose progress for about 30 seconds which blows but it's easy to return to the adventuring.

the solution to all puzzles within this game are to smash physics objects into other physics objects, bunnyhop through corridors full of non-threatening nudists, or read a couple pages from your book.
it's very cool.

Anyway I've been doing a marathon of all Frictional's library of games, because the Penumbra games as well as Amnesia are all extremely memorable games from my childhood. While Overture definitely had more intrigue and mystery going for it, this game fucking kills it for me in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics. Where it loses me by comparison is the personalities of important characters. Red in Overture plays a convincing lunatic to the end, while Clarence and to a lesser extent Dr. Amabel make Black Plague feel more like a budget sci-fi movie with quirky dialogue. While Clarence is conceptually fantastic and contributes to some of the best scenes in the game (turning the corridors into a nonsensical maze while communicating your location to enemies), he also constantly interrupts your moody adventure with his personality synthesized from the films our protagonist has seen over the years. He represents a despair inducing threat to your life almost as often as he represents an obnoxious meta-conversationalist and quip machine, this can feel disruptive of the aforementioned great atmosphere. Dr. Amabel is simply an unfortunate victim of her one-liners, in attempting to make a nerdy but sane sounding female character they sorta ended up with somebody who sets the tone of all her interactions with her own brand of eye rolling quips, practically every time you answer a video call from her. What's supposed to represent your protagonist's only hopeful encounter in the entire story feels more like paying your taxes. Speaking of the protagonist, I love his characterization as an obnoxious adventure game prick being devolved into more of a braindead weirdo as a result of the horrors he's experienced, and his progressing infection. Clarence deleting the periodic table from your head will always be a classic.

Oh yeah, I also don't really find any of these games spooky in particular, though as far as spooky games go, they were insanely high concept for their time. Nowadays they feel more like campy adventure games with a neat story and stealth mechanics you can just choose to ignore.

Probably my 2nd favorite Frictional game. Penumbra: Black Plague is everything I could ask from a horror game. I love the atmosphere, the music, the premise, just everything. The only real complaints I have about the game is that some of the puzzles are really nonsensical and that the ending is a really slow nothing burger of a finale. Clarence will always be one of my favorite game companions (even thought he IS a bit annoying) and he was the only real break from all the hiding and chasing in this game. This is definitely a must play if you love the horror genre and with how cheap it is during steam sales there’s no harm in giving the Penumbra series a shot.