Penumbra Overture

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $9.93

Features:

• Penumbra: Overture is a first person adventure game which focuses on story, immersion and puzzles. Instead of using violence to progress the player has to use his/her wits to guide Philip on his quest to unravel the past. Played from a first person viewpoint, Penumbra is very different from other adventure games. Not only is it powered by a 3D engine utilising cutting edge technology, it also h

Accessories:

PC Gamer (1-year)

Customer Reviews:

Lots of crashes, very unstable game. [Posted on 2008-01-12]
Not only did this game crash many times on me while playing, it crashed my computer! On my final time of playing this game I got several crashes back to the desktop. Then when I tried to restart my computer, I got the blue screen with an "unmountable boot volume" error. I had to use my XP recover disc to recover my computer system from this problem. Thankfully, using the recover disc worked. If this hadn't have worked I might have had to reformat the entire hardrive.

I have an Nvidia 7950 with a quad processor, plenty of RAM, and pretty recent drivers. I was also using the latest 1.02 patch for the game itself. Also, if you enable the hardware sound option when you first start the game you will get an immediate crash back to the desktop for that.

Despite all the crashes, I did manage to complete the game. The game is short... real short. And, all the areas look the same. You are basically in some underground abandoned mines the whole time with a brief period out the snow at the beginning and at the end. Also, this game did not scare me one time. I played with the lights out and everything.. and nothing. You want to play a truly scary adventure pc game, play the recently released Darkness Within In Pursuit of Loath Nolder. Now, that is one truly frightening game experience. Darkness Within is one of the best adventure games I've ever played.

The only thing cool about Penumbra Overture is that you can pretty much take any object and toss it around with very realistic physics. That's it. And, the combat in this game is very, very frustrating. I know the developers did not want the user to run and gun this adventure but really... there are jumping spiders and dogs that will surely frustrate the average gamer with no saves but at certain points. There is a way to alter the user file to use quick saves but these can contribute even more to the many crashes.

The instability of Penumbra Overture and the possibility of majorly messing up your machine is really not worth it. I am very leery to try any other episode in this series now.

Great Game, no tech support [Posted on 2008-02-29]
I started playing this game on an ATI X1650 Pro video card. Ran great, looked great, great game. I have since bought an HD 2600 Pro card and have had nothing but problems. The game freezes if you go to the options page and randomly during game. Patched the game, and now I have horrible graphics. Can not even continue the game due to such horrid graphics. The distributor of the game, Got Game has no tech support, and the instruction manual gives the developer support site. The developer has made a patch, but it only works on the version of the game bought from their website. They have so far given no response to the many that have purchased a retail CD version of the game. Be very wary when purchasing the game, or any game from the developer, frictional games. Great game, horrible support.

penumbra rocks [Posted on 2008-05-27]
This was a great game, the only thing i have to complain about is the lack of replay value, but all in all it was worth the time and money. This game literally scared me out of my seat a few times and the plot is very well thought out.

The sequel is very much the same; great story, enviromental puzzles, and shocking scares, but no replay. I recommend it as well.

Game Makes Me Feel Dizzy [Posted on 2008-05-30]
This game made me feel so dizzy and I just started playing it. I have no desire to keep playing. The controls are weird. I guess they were trying to be cool by allowing you to pick up and move stuff, but when it makes you dizzy it is not cool anymore. I just played it and feel nauseated. I guess I just wanted to warn people who are sensitive to motion. You can try it, but it will make you feel sea sick.

Possibly the worst modern game so far [Posted on 2008-09-15]
Wow was I ever disappointed with Penumbra. Sure the idea was great and it gets your heart rate up to run away from those dogs and spiders. However, it only gets your heart rate up because the game is horribly frustrating. The controls suck, the combat system sucks, and the frustration of redoing the same series of events again and again to just die repeatedly from spiders of dogs is horribly lame. This game could have been fun but the miserable controls, combat, and tendency to crash the computer makes it one of the worst relatively modern game ever produced. Save your money. Get something else.

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