sNeaksieGarrett on 7/3/2009 at 02:09
Wow.... I didn't catch that. Penumbra on steam now? Damn, steam is getting so huge with all the games.:o
catbarf on 11/3/2009 at 20:09
So today I got Black Plague at my local Gamestop for $0.01 (Yeah, one penny). Since nobody seems to have discussed it much, I'll post my thoughts as I get into it.
sNeaksieGarrett on 11/3/2009 at 20:32
1 cent? WHT THE F?:wot:
242 on 12/3/2009 at 09:42
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
1 cent? WHT THE F?:wot:
And it's better than most of the modern full price games 10 times.
Rogue Keeper on 12/3/2009 at 09:53
Just like Call of Cthulhu, Penumbra is survival horror trilogy par excellence, pity that Requiem doesn't reach qualities of the first two, still it's a good puzzle game.
catbarf on 12/3/2009 at 18:51
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
1 cent? WHT THE F?:wot:
It was marked $5, and when the guy rang it up he said something about having the disk up front and that he was looking for the box, and I think he said that it was going to be thrown out, so he sold it to me for a penny. Yay.
catbarf on 25/3/2009 at 00:37
So, after just shy of four hours, I've beaten Black Plague. I don't feel like I missed too much plot-wise by not playing Overture, it seems fairly straightforward.
The best way to describe it is that it decelerates. The starting room, in a jail cell, is amazingly atmospheric as you desperately search for a way out of your cell while someone else is killed in another cell. There are puzzles that require you to think, creepy monsters seen only with glimpses, and some real panic-inducing events like when you first encounter an infected.
And then it just sort of peters out. By the end of the game, the atmosphere and design has been replaced with an obnoxious wise-cracking spirit talking in my ear. The one-off scares and monsters have become zombies with patrol paths and linear objectives. And the puzzles, which initially forced me to think, become fetch quests. Oh, and it ends after four hours- not much gameplay at all. The lack of weapons is a nice touch, but you don't really see many enemies at all and most of them can be avoided by sprinting, so it's not terribly conducive to that sort of fear.
It's a shame. The physics engine is fun to work with, some of the puzzles have originality (such as activating the server), and the game does some real mind-screws. But it's just too shallow. There are places I'd like to go to, things I'd like to see, but they're just not there. When the game does things right, it's brilliant- I really liked the bit where you venture into your own mind. But elsewhere, it's sometimes not scary, sometimes not original, and sometimes not fun. It oscillates between compelling puzzles with sheer horror, and a somewhat-dark, unpolished tech demo.
The potential is there, just not the execution.
Angel Dust on 25/3/2009 at 02:31
You really, really should have played Overture first, it is a far superior game in all aspects, except maybe those rubbish dogs, but now that you've played Black Plague it's not going to have the same impact it might have. A lot of the flaws you mentioned are still there but the puzzle design is much stronger, it's scarier and the writing significantly better. Red > that snarky dickhead.
catbarf on 25/3/2009 at 10:07
I'll probably buy it off Steam this weekend.
Volitions Advocate on 25/3/2009 at 14:25
He is right. overture was amazing. The problem with black plague was that your character starts to know things. In overture you're completely clueless the entire time. I think it makes the entire experience more tense. Not that black plague wasn't great. It was requiem that disappointed me. But i suppose thats because I had it in my mind that it was something it wasn't.
