What if Portal, but spooky? Honestly, that's not a bad idea for a game, and sometimes, very occasionally, Penumbra: Requiem uses its inspiration well enough to actually be creepy for a second or two. The rest of the time though, it's like gaming weetabix. Bland, boring puzzles with zero stakes and a nonsensical plot. I do respect that Requiem serves as an expansion to Black Plague rather than stands alone, but even on that level it fails, given that what people generally like about the Penumbra games isn't stiff pressure pad puzzles.

It's two hours long and incredibly easy, the only difficulty being in actually seeing what you're doing amongst all the dark, muddy textures. I didn't hate it, but I can't say it sparked any joy in me at all.

Oof, what a way to end the series. Penumbra: Requiem, in all respects, plays and feels like a dodgy amateur ROM hack. There is no consistency in tone or theme, and most levels feel like they are made of assets pulled from the first two Penumbra games and just randomly slammed together. The hallucinatory nature of the setting immediately kills any stakes or atmosphere this could have had, the story is nonsensical, and the non-sequitur fourth wall breaks come completely out of nowhere. After all, nothing has to fit or make sense when everything is just happening inside a madman's head, right? It is remarkable how less engaging this is than the other Penumbra games, especially Black Plague which drew me in pretty effectively.

Also, out of nowhere, this game marks a complete change in genre from the others. Penumbra Requiem is a puzzle game with moderate platforming elements: neither of these genres work at all in this game engine. The other games had inventory puzzles, sure, but Requiem is entirely about physics puzzles; it still has the inventory system, but you literally never use it unless you have to heal. The gameplay here is an absolute shitshow; I lost count of the number of times I softlocked because the game's physics had a special moment and some important box or whatever would simply ping out of existence. And the platforming is just diabolical; Phillip doesn't seem to have a consistent jump length, it's impossible to tell your own height or exact ground location, and I even found I could make him hover for a few seconds by mashing the jump button and confusing the game. All in all, this game feels like an attempt to make Portal in Penumbra for some reason (it even has its own GLaDOS in the form of the PA system from Black Plague), and it does not work in the slightest.

Even if not for the jank and terrible controls though this would still be a poor game; there are a couple of ok puzzles in there somewhere, but the vast majority are either uninspired, obvious to solve but awkward to execute, or straight up moon logic. The puzzles in the other games can be a bit obnoxious at times, sure, but those games had other things going on; this kind of puzzle feels so much more frustrating and bemusing when it is all there is to focus on.

Honestly, even if you played the other Penumbras, you can just skip this. I wouldn't even recommend playing to see how the Penumbra story concludes, because everything here is just vague metaphor and nonsense, and the cliffhanger ending from Black Plague would be a much, much better sign-off for the series. I think it's just better to pretend Penumbra was a 2-part series all along.

Requiem, for reasons that are mostly unfortunate, takes the place of being the worst entry in the Penumbra series with its surprising distancing from its survival horror format and, for whatever reason, turning into a mediocre puzzle-platformer with controls that were certainly not meant for the genre.

As many people familiar with the series know, it was planned to be an entire trilogy, where Overture and Black Plague would serve as the first and second entries. However, dissonance with the publisher stopped that from happening and urged Frictional to tie up loose ends on the story with this pretty weak-willed expansion for BP.

For some reason, they decided to drop the really solid survival horror that made Black Plague a really fun time and just completely shifted to puzzles for the whole time, and not just the “where’s the key hidden” fare that the game usually hangs with. The game sometimes plays like a really shoddy attempt at capturing the cold and hostile serenity underlined with logic puzzles that made the first Portal game so great. There’s a lot of platforming in some of these puzzles, and trust me, the game was DEFINITELY not meant for platforming, as jumping from lift to lift sometimes feels like a diceroll’s chance rather than determined by your own skill. It really sucks when some of the puzzles are halfway decent, because next thing they’re hitting you with the most random reference to the Donkey Kong arcade game in the form of a platforming challenge, and dear god it does not work in the slightest, with not only the puzzle itself sucking but the music randomly taking a chiptune feel, which was so random and offputting.

Even though the ending was pretty bad, I didn't mind the "story" that was at hand, and the couple times they do comic relief with the centre announcer saying out-of-character things really worked for me.

On the bright side, I’m glad that Frictional got to kick off the Amnesia series after this (and to great success/popularity), because in many ways, the first game is essentially the Penumbra 3 that never happened; There’s a big overlap in tone, mechanics, and level design, and even when I don’t completely buy the hype and praise for TDD, I’m glad it really kickstarted Frictional’s popularity.

Hopefully I’ll look into Penumbra: Necrologue soon, which is a total conversion mod for Amnesia that basically turns it back into Penumbra with all the same mechanics, in the form of a continuation of the story.