First Impressions: Penumbra - Requiem

Penumbra: Requiem, is the final installment of the Penumbra series from Frictional Games.  

P:R is an odd hybrid, considering the series and genre that the game is coming from.  The first two games in the series were straight up survival horror although the second game lacked the hell-bent wolves of the first game, although it was no less terrifying. The game starts right after the previous game ended.  There might be some time that passed, but it's minimal.  However long it takes for you to wake up after being knocked unconscious. So, kind of like the transition between the first two games.

So yes, hybrid-esque.  And I really want to like this game.  Is that not a great way to start a review?  Coming from a survival horror genre, Requiem takes a hard left turn and drives through the guard rail.  I don't know what that means.  Requiem really reminds me of Portal except there aren't any turrets.  Correction, I don't know if there are any turrets, but there are explosive bottles of rejected ketchup from the Heinz Corp.

  

Requiem removes all enemies and turns the game into a straight puzzle-platformer.  You have to go from point A to point C while avoiding pit B.  It's very much out of place and feeling with the rest of the series. I'm currently in conflict with how I feel about the game.  

Okay, the world is the same.  You find yourself, I think, in The Tomb that was heavily mentioned in Penumbera: Black Plague and I'm assuming that your mission is to find your way through/out.  A lot of the puzzles are based around moving one object over to another area where you have to manipulate another object, then go back over there to press that button and run across the floor to make it through that door on the other side of the room, which is full of moving platforms on conveyor tracks.  Get it?

It would be like playing Resident Evil one moment, then playing Portal in a haunted mansion the next.  Okay, that game sounds pretty cool and I would want to play that.  That essentially is what Penumbra: Requiem is though, so I'm at a bit of a lost.  And I don't know why I'm having such a hard time coming to terms with how I ultimately feel about this game.  I love the series, I love the company, I'm just having a hard time putting as much time in a single sitting as I did with the previous two games in the series.

That's where I'm at and I'm really hoping that I like it there.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Can't Even Wrap My Brain Around How You Do That!



P.S.  I should also mention that Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is now available to pre-order from anywhere that sells online/downloadable games.  The Gog, Steam, Frictional Games' all have the game available.  So go do that if you've like anything that either Frictional Games or co-developer The Chinese Room has ever made.