Penumbra: II takes place after the events of the Penumbra tech demo. For people who have not played the tech demo you get knocked out by someone unknown. In Penumbra II you wake up were you have been taken by the person.
Quite scary, excellent atmosphere, great monster encounters. I hope you'll make another one in the future.
Music 9/10
Sounds 8/10
Voice Actors/Acting 7.5/10
Athmopshere 10/10
Level Desing 8/10
Short, really short, unchallenging and nothing that wasn't really done before...
This was really enjoyable one and scary as hell. Monster encounters are perfectly balanced and chases are intense as hell. Desing is average, but fair to go through all the levels. Item finding and where they belong is little annoying, especially those keycard doors. I find myself lost many times, because of that beginning.
Story is okay, but I wanted still more to find and not just get that dull ending with a flashback.
Pros:
- Music
- Monsters
- Atmosphere
- Intense chases
- Glowstick
Neg:
- Confusing at times
- Should be longer
- Rushed ending, expected more
Overall this mod was really nice and refreshing, but still lacks of gameplay and need more detailing on the levels and even more complexing puzzles to solve. I love penumbras so I really see you put effort on this one as well.
7/10 - Enjoyable ride with intense moments
Disclaminer: I was a bug tester for this mod, so I was slightly involved in the mod's development.
Story: 5/10
You made it clear that this is a continuation of the Penumbra Tech demo, therefor I didn't expect a unique story. However, notes are cliché "Oh **** I have to escape, oh no monster is coming!!", it seems like you used a few ideas from other penumbra games etc. It's not a bad plot, but it's cliché.
Music and sounds: 8/10
Real good, but the same kind of music was used way too often. More variation would be appreciated.
Voice acting: 7/10
Overall, well done. Here's the thing though, I prefer amateur voice actors that use their normal voices over a good voice actor that tries to sound different. Unless you're a professional, most people can't pull this off without sounding cringy.
I know the voice actor for the protaganist from youtube. He does a good job, but if he didin't sound like someone he ain't, it would have been even better.
Puzzles: 8/10
Lack of mementos and hints, but not too hard to figure out for the most part. Overall, the difficulty is really good.
Athmopshere: 7/10
Not many scares, but the enviroment could be pretty creepy and dark at times.
Monster encounters: 9/10
The chase sequences were excellent in this mod. One reason is probably because I'm not used to these type of monsters. Either way, they scared me good at times.
Bugs: 8/10
If I rated this mod before I bug tested it, this score would be as low as 4/10. You fixed a lot of issues. However, at the stairs that used to be glitchy, the invisible walls are not high enough, so when I'm on the top of the stairs I can jump over them and trap myself. I would recommand removing them and add a death trigger instead, but if you really want invisible walls, make them so tall that players can't jump over them.
Level design: 5/10
Average at best. Lack of details, repeditive, but does however capture the penumbra feel pretty well.
Creativity and overall effort: 5/10
A good mod can take upwards of months, even years to be really creative. While not being bad, it sure lacks of it in this mod. I'm still wondering why I pick up a CD but then see a floppy disk in my inventory, or why there is an entire room with a human eye but no blood or any other body parts, or why they made a monster cell with a huge vent it can escape through ^^.
Final verdict:
A huge improvement from your first mod, no doubt about it. I'm glad you listen and learn and it really shows off. I would say this mod is, somewhere around 7-7.5 However, since I can't give it a score like that, I'm going to round it off to 8/10.
Keep learning, and take your time. Some of the things you do is excellent, while other things are average. If you could take longer and not rush with your work, I can guarantee you that in the future, you could make a 10/10 mod.
I really enjoyed this mod and how it added all penumbra game endings into one but yet it still felt like the tech demo. I also liked how u changed the glow stick's on button to g that was a nice feature. However the bad part of the mod is that it wasnt that long. It was about 2 hours long for me but I still enjoyed thanks for creating the mod!