Solid to-the-point gameplay. It's a surprisingly fun game
At first, I'll just be straight honest and say that, gameplay wise, this is NOT my kind of horror game. I prefer survival horror games as RE, SH, FF/PZ or Siren by far, maybe even Alone in the Dark which has aged significantly worse than this collection of games, but for the people who is interested enough in what this collection has to offer I can say it is worth your time and that you can completely ignore the negative reviews that are made by people that are looking for quick jumpscares and have completely different expectations to what a horror fan that has been desensitized from horror may have. This is clearly not a survival horror, it doesn't have the classic map design by closed dungeons or the well-made backtracking (it has more like a hub between different areas), it is more of a first person 'run and hide' game like a lot of those crappy af games that became so popular after Amnesia and Outlast (also Slender if you have an even worse taste) and that showed their best with games like SOMA and Alien Isolation. But these Penumbra games have a decent amount of reading and focus on the plot and setting/ambience which is pretty damn good if you're into that as I am. Penumbra (I'm gonna talk about these games as one for practical purposes) is a very slow and clumsy game with an interesting story that is clearly inspired by horror literature (mainly Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness). The gameplay dynamic is frustrating and I'm not sure if it's completely on purpose or not, but although it is not awful, and you can get used to it with enough patience, it certainly is its weakest point along with the inventory interface which is amazingly bad, as is the player's interaction with it. Don't get me wrong, I liked this game, and even if it's not my personal taste, I can see its value and the effort put in it. The game is remarkable on its technical aspects and the developers clearly wanted to create a game with a lot of interaction with the environment.
It's not a wonderful game but has its moments and the ending is quite interesting. As it happens with these kind of games, the gameplay and jumpscare dynamic gets repetitive and hollow.
