Penumbra: Overture - First Impressions

My most recent video game purchase was the Penumbra series (Overture, Black Plague, and Requiem) on Steam for the tidy price of $5. I had heard relatively little about the series, only having a basic idea of what it was about, but for $5 I figured I couldn't go wrong. What I ended up with is a delightful little first person action adventure horror game (that's a lot of adjectives).

Penumbra begins with your character, Philip, on a boat for Greenland to investigate some of the mystery concerning your father (I don't think I was paying attention carefully enough here as I've already forgotten the exact details). I quickly found myself inside an "abandoned" mine of some kind.

I was immediately impressed by the interface. While it has traditional WASD first person shooter controls, the majority of interaction is actually done with a little hand cursor. It instantly reminded me of countless adventure games I've played. You can either directly enter interaction mode in which the mouse controls your cursor rather than your looking direction, or use the mouse to look around which moves your center point (I turned on a cross hair) over stuff until the cursor appears. Again, in classic adventure game style, the right mouse button performs a "look" and provides more information (often witty and sarcastic) about whatever your cursor is over while the left mouse button picks things up. The place the game really shines, however, is in its physical interactions.

Penumbra has a pretty decent physics system and forces you to use it to interact with the environment. To open a door, for example, you click on the door and drag the mouse until the door opens... the same goes for opening drawers and chests, even for flipping switches or turning cranks. It works surprisingly well and adds a nice level of immersion to the equation.

It also features another adventure game staple: combining inventory items. In one area, I had to find some string, combine it with a coating of some kind I had picked up, then dip it into some black powder I had found by breaking open a barrel. All to make a wick which I eventually stuck into a barrel of TNT and used to blow open the way to the next part of the game.

While combat exists in Penumbra, so far the game has more or less discouraged it. I've yet to find any enemy except for some zombie-like dogs. So far, it has been rather easy to either avoid them outright or lure them away using the plethora of stale beef jerky I've been finding. The few I have fought have been in melee combat with a pickaxe I found. Instead of just pushing the button to equip your axe and then clicking to swing it, the game actually forces you to swing your mouse back and forth (or up and down) to swing the pick. It adds a bit of difficulty to the attacks, but again, also adds some immersion.

So far, I must admit I'm relatively impressed. The puzzles have been pretty interesting without being impossible (I really liked the one where I had to listen to a Morse code message being played over the radio and then figure out the numbers involved which became the pass code for a gate) and the setting is reasonably creepy. My only big problem has been some graphical issues (see my screenshot) which seem to be limited to ATI cards... however the problem isn't constant and usually goes away if I restart the game. I'm anxious to see where the game goes (a friend of mine promised me a "wow" moment) and will be updating you all as I continue to play.