Penumbra: Black Plague is an adventure game that's all about atmosphere. Playing in the afternoon with the TV buzzing in the background doesn't cut it. It's the kind of game that should be played at night -- with the lights out and preferably after everyone else has gone to bed.

Black Plague continues the story of Penumbra: Overture. You play the role of Philip, who in the first game trekked to Greenland after receiving a strange letter from his thought-to-be-dead father. There, he discovered a lost mine which was converted into a secret base/laboratory; unfortunately, it was also infested with terribly angry monsters. Numerous journal and video entries hinted at a greater evil which was soon to emerge.

At the start of Black Plague, you wake up in a locked cell with no items and a serious headache. The lab is now filled with ransacked rooms and a lot of dead scientists with mutated humans running about trying to kill you. In this case, a strange virus has infected the staff (or just plain killed them) and you're the last man standing, so to speak.


Even though Black Plague's control scheme is ripped right out of a first-person shooter (WASD controls, etc), the game is pure adventure. Because the controls are second nature to anyone who has ever played a shooter, it's extremely easy to get into the game, and there is no real "fighting" to speak of, a significant improvement over the terribly poor combat that felt forced in the original game. Here, all Philip does is solve puzzles and do whatever he can to avoid detection; when detected he has to run his tail off because the mutants will rip him to pieces if caught.

Because Philip doesn't carry an Uzi, it creates all sorts of tension when trapped in a storage room only to hear the rumblings of a sentry mutant patrolling the hallways. There's literally no way out and you either have to take a deep breath and run for your life, or hide in the shadows, hoping the guard doesn't spot you. It's tense stuff. Granted, it does seem odd at times when you find an item that you'd think would be an ideal way to fight off the monsters (like a hacksaw) but the only way to survive is to avoid being seen or to outright flee the scene.

Despite all the snooping and running around, Black Plague is a straight-up puzzle-solving adventure game at heart. Most sequences force you to simply figure out what to do next... the game isn't going to hold your hand. This becomes clear in the first five minutes when Philip wakes up in what's basically a prison cell. The nifty way you manipulate objects in the game allows you to come up with some inventive ways of figuring out certain puzzles and there isn't just one way to conquer many of the game's brain teasers, a great design touch. Object manipulation is "physics-based." Basically that means Philip can pull open drawers, flip over old mattresses, move boxes, smash toolboxes, etc. With the mouse you can move and twist and turn basically anything that isn't bolted to the floor.