Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Frictional Games
Minimum requirements: Windows 2000\XP, 1.5 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 2 GB hard drive space, Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 video card (GeForce 4 MX not supported)
Genre: Action Adventure
Release date: Available now
Review by: Michael Smith

Have you ever walked into a movie 30 minutes late and spent the next hour and a half trying to figure out what’s going on? Did you start watching Lost in Season 3, only to give up a few episodes in because you had no idea what was happening and why? This is the problem I faced when I fired up Penumbra: Requiem, the third game in developer Frictional Games’ horror adventure series. Without knowledge of the series’ back-story, I’m left to evaluate the game on face value, which reveals a combination of Mystian puzzle solving and an interface that turned my mouse into a Wiimote.

The story so far: Young Philip has inherited some unusual articles from his father, who disappeared 30 years ago and is presumed dead. Among his effects is a cryptic letter that leads Philip to The Shelter, a self-contained underground research station in ice-covered Greenland. When Philip finally gains access to The Shelter, he discovers that something terrifying has occurred: scientists have created and accidentally released the Tuurngait Virus, a highly infectious disease that gradually turns the infected into killer zombies. Philip decides to explore the seemingly empty corridors and tunnels of The Shelter in search of his father.

As Requiem opens, you (as Philip) find yourself in what seems to be an archaeological dig. You have no idea how you got there, and you’re faced with a door that won’t open and a puzzle so vexing that you almost expect to run into Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. Finally opening the door, you find a portal to another environment that can only be opened by retrieving glowing key orbs scattered around the area. As you move from area to area and puzzle to puzzle, you start seeing characters and situations from earlier in your travels as you search for a way back to civilization.

Requiem, like its predecessors Overture and Black Plague, is played in the first person. You use standard movement keys to guide Philip through the dark, dank and creepy Shelter, with nothing more than a flashlight (with seemingly endless power; no need to replace batteries when they go low, as you had to do in Black Plague), a glowstick and painkillers, pills that you take to heal injuries. You are not given any sort of weapon in Requiem, but you never need one; I went from start to finish and was not attacked by any sort of enemy. Your wits, however, are assaulted by a never-ending succession of puzzles of all types: platform jumping, key finding, and object scavenging. You name it; if it’s been in an adventure game, you’re likely to find it in The Shelter.

Requiem‘s most interesting element by far is the interface. Instead of just clicking on an item to either use or add to your inventory, clicking and holding the left mouse button allows you to lift an item into the air and place it directly where you want it, even toss it from one side of the screen to the other. This technique needs to be mastered quickly; an early puzzle requires you to toss an explosive ketchup bottle at a weak and rusted chain to drop a bridge over an unjumpable chasm (yes, I said exploding condiments – just go with it). Unfortunately, as novel as this control scheme is, it quickly becomes more work than fun, and I developed sore muscles in my right arm just trying to spin control wheels or break open switchboxes with bricks. If I had wanted aerobic exercise with my game, I would have played Wii Sports. Also, the portals send you to locations that don’t seem to have any connection to the ones you just left. The puzzles have no relation whatsoever to Requiem‘s already barebones story, and are found in environments that are an odd hybrid of Half Life‘s Zen levels and the best of Myst‘s mechanical switch-throwing classics. There are also more mundane problems, such as clipping errors in which items fall straight through other items without interacting with them, graphics artifacts that appear throughout the game, an odd square box that appears in the upper left corner of the screen through the entire final level, and a GlaDOS-wannabe voice who takes you right out of the mood of the game by announcing how many keys are left to be found in each level.

In order to have a better understanding of Requiem, I went back and played the first few levels of Black Plague, which must be installed on your system in order to play Requiem. I’m glad that I did, because Frictional has made improvements from the former to the latter; you can save as much as you want and wherever you want in Requiem, there are no loading screens in the middle of the levels, and you don’t have to worry about some zombie with a flashlight sneaking up on you as you try to figure out the puzzles, most of which are more frustrating than they are difficult. If you want to have even a small understanding of what’s going on in Requiem, you have to play Black Plague. Otherwise, you’re left with a flawed and annoying, yet atmospheric and creepy, adventure game that’ll have you reaching for the Ben Gay for your aching mouse arm.

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