Almos

Penumbra

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One genuinely scary game with professional level graphics, created by a small group of independent developers on top of their own graphics engine and Newton Game Physics.

A demo, actually, but still worth playing.

Needs shader support to run.

And brains.

And dexterity.

And nerves of steel.

http://frictionalgames.com/?q=penumbra

:getmecoat

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So... it's like Alone in the Dark but in First Person?

I've seen my share if in-door, small room, with dimmed light and monster games... so no thanks

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It plays like a combination of Trespasser and every simple first-person adventure game ever made. As a tech demo, I guess it's alright, but I wasn't very impressed. Especially with the ending. :shifty:

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An "Episode 1" demo is out, and the game turns out to be a point&click adventure with a 1st person view. You'll want to try it, even though a good PC seems to be necessary to run it. Turning off these blurry and grainy next-gen effects will help you boost your fps and thus avoid resulting headaches.

Demo (125 Mb)

Here's a preview while you're downloading, so that you may see how much the game has improved (yes it has) :

Video

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That video didn't look half bad. Why all the hate? It looks decent enough. Especially by independants.

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This episode one demo is different from the one I was originally talking about. This one looks much, much better by comparison.

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I just bought all of the Penumbra games and I'm really enjoying the first one. It's like Thief: The Dark Project meets first person adventure games and survival horror, and Trespasser I guess, though I didn't play that much.

The sound effects and music are pretty good and it looks a lot better and more polished than an earlier demo I played. The user interface could do with some more polish, but it works well enough as it is.

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Yeah... I guess you wouldn't call that a survival horror game cause it ain't really about surviving, mainly horror puzzle solving would be my pick :)

But for once, not having a bazooka to fight off zombies makes you really feel how it would be like if YOU were in there... I'd say i'd be halfway between that guy's attitude "ok i have to put the refrigerator aside so I can climb up there to the vents and escape safely..." and the player's like "Or you could take that chair and beat the crap out of this zombie dog" and left for dead "oh, more zombies, no matter i'll just kill them all, seen worst".

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I disagree, I think it is about surviving. The game already starts with you climbing into the shelter to escape from the cold. A little onward it becomes more about exploration, but there's definitely a survival element present throughout the first part at least (just started the second episode). I guess most games clearly classified as survival horror aren't only about surviving either (I don't know, I don't play the genre that much).

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Frictional Games, the developers of Penumbra are working on a new game.

Unfortunately, from what info there is about it, it may turn out technically better and so on, but seems to me like they have learned the completely wrong lessons from the Penumbra series. Watch the beginning of this interview: the major lesson they learned is that players want to bash stuff and kill enemies. So they're going to put in weapons and make the game more action-oriented. That's probably going to ruin it, but the cynic in me thinks they may actually end up selling more copies if they make it more similar to other survival horror games...

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On the other hand, maybe adding a little combat is not that bad an idea. Thief had more combat than Penumbra, depending on how you played it. If they keep it at a similar level as Thief, it might actually make their concept better: those spiders in Penumbra were damn annoying and it would be good to more easily be able to kill small creatures like that. In one place in Penumbra I had to resort to some boring repetitive tricks and lure the spiders to their death one by one.

This paragraph from an interview is more encouraging:

There is no connection to the Penumbra games, but we are staying within the horror genre, further trying to explore and polish many of the ideas we have. This time we are definitely concentrating on making a survival horror game, something that is easier defined and not open for debate if it is an adventure game or a first person game. We are designing it to be a game with weapons, but not about weapons, there will always be options and a preference to avoid combat but the combat features of the game will be more prominent than what it was in Penumbra. For anyone worried, we do still believe in less combat makes for a better horror experience.

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What do you have against spiders?

a mallet, fly squatter, news paper, shoes, etc.

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