It's fun being scared.
User Rating: 9 | Penumbra: Black Plague PC
Penumbra: Black Plague is frightening, pretty, and challenging. The puzzles are complex and difficult, which makes them all the more fulfilling to complete. Adding to the difficulty of the puzzles are the monsters who inhabit the ruined research facility. If they're not chasing you, you're either hiding from them or anticipating one to bust forth from any corner of a room. The developers did a good thing when they decided not to over-saturate the player with monsters, but instead reserve them, which prevents me, personally, from being desensitized to how terrifying they look.The story is well written and the environments are realistic, which makes the world seem more alive than typical horror or puzzle genre games. The physics engine and world interactivity adds to the realism of the environments, as you are able to move objects in almost any way you could in real life. The graphics are nice as well. Not quite as nice as a game like Crysis, of course, but definitely nice.
