Enemies

Beginning with Overture, Penumbra made itself well known by the atmosphere created by dark corners lurking with monsters, and fake sounds that could play with your nerves increasing your adrenaline without encountering any enemy. Stealth was a good solution for such situations, but sometimes you were forced to fight the monster. Either you were using the pickaxe or the shovel, you had to hover the mouse on the surface of your mousepad in order to simulate the hitting movement. The character was responding slow to your mouse gestures, the whole scene ending with your inevitable death. Something had to be done. So what better solution then to give up this concept. You will deal with less direct encounters, but in each one you have the option to flee or to block yourself behind closed doors. The tension remains the same because you are aware that in any moment you can be spotted by a monster, and believe me, it's hard to get rid of them.

Environment

Black Plague has a seemingly longer gameplay duration and an increased variety of actions. Probably because there are actually two episodes stuffed in a single one. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Especially to the environmental design. The developers were forced to use all their sketches, and drawings of two episodes to create a vast underground facility presented in a single one. You get to see:

• internal environment: long halls, dirty cells, kennels full of dead dogs, wasted offices, secret chambers, infected laboratories;

• external environment: arctic land governed by a deadly winter, and an outer realm where you actually meet the Tuurngait;

Although enhanced, the graphics don't turn out to be glamorous, but surprisingly fitted to the atmosphere. Poor textures are clever covered by the use of darkness, post effects, and noise filtering. But the use of these graphical tricks turn out to be somehow harmful for some of the gamers including me. I encountered a slightly dizziness several times, especially when I was lurking too much in the dark corridors. So pay attention how you set the gamma correction level.

Conclusion

Penumbra Black Plague is a complete game which brings lots of answers to the previous episode but can be played also as standalone one. It's a remarkable horror experience set in a realistic environment. Probably this combination makes you freak out while you will be playing it. There are also two memorable moments, kind of fantasy style meets the Lovecraft horror style, when you actually feel ripped off from the whole action and thrown in a different world. I'm talking about the nightmare scene and the Tuurngait realm.

The end of the game is actually a metaphor, something that today you don't find in many games, or even movies. It's a smart conclusion about the free will and the human kind state. Phillip decides he will not obey blindly to a god, but he better destroys it. His last words are: "Kill them. Kill them all."