It’s a little unfair to stack a game up against its iterative sequels, but it’s hard to avoid viewing Penumbra through the lens of Amnesia. It was made by the same people, it follows the same first-person horror style, and the presentation of the narrative is almost the same, so it’s natural to wonder why this game didn’t blow up in the same way its successor eventually would. At first, you’re slowly walking from room to room, keeping your head down and your light off, listening to the horrible creaking and groaning of the walls, it’s everything a horror game should be, at least until you reach the final boss fight. Well, by final boss fight, what I really mean is your very first encounter with a wolf a few minutes after the intro. It’s a real fight too, not the sort of puzzle encounters that have come to characterize these games, you take out a pickaxe and wildly flail around to kill it. The controls are so clunky and the physics so jittery that you might die a couple of times, but after that, you may as well have conquered the game. These wolves are essentially the primary antagonists, spawning all over and being the main obstacles while moving from puzzle to puzzle, and as you get used to fighting them, the tense atmosphere drains almost into nothingness. There are a couple moments that break the mold, but they definitely wouldn’t be enough to justify a recommendation if this was a standalone horror game. However, this series was planned as a trilogy, and this game’s title of “Overture” encapsulates how it’s best understood as a prelude to what comes next, which can be discussed in the following review.