I won't lie. I'm still stuck on playing World of Goo. I've got several video game reviews I'm trying to write this weekend (I know. Rough life.) And yet, I keep returning to World of Goo instead of moving along in my other game-related writing projects.

I say that, because I fear I'm going to write a review now about Frictional Games' Penumbra Overture that is impatient and dissatisfied.

It's been a while since I've played a first-person action/puzzle game like Penumbra Overture, I'll admit. Despite all my brother's encouragement, I never really got into Myst, and so it may very well be since Return to Zork that I've been really immersed in a game that involved wandering around with that sort of must-click-on-everything-must-talk-to-everyone problem-solving gameplay. Oh gawd, I loved Zork. But that was 1993ish, and my standards for engaging gameplay have changed some.

Penumbra Overture begins with an opening sequence about your dead mother and a mysterious note from your long-presumed-dead father who'd abandoned you as an infant. And then suddenly you're in Greenland. To protect yourself from a blizzard, you enter a mine. And, um, that's as far as I got.

You can manipulate key pieces of your surroundings -- pick up, move, break things. I found a flashlight. A flare. A hammer. I broke through a wall. But then I got bored.

Oh and irritatingly, it seems as though there's no easy way to save (but as it was open-sourced as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, I should figure out how to do that myself rather than just gripe about it).

There's a lot more to this game, and I didn't even experience combat. So really, what the hell sort of review is this anyway. Let me point you to a "real" review here which says that the game can be beaten in about six or seven hours.

But don't mind me while I spend the next six or seven hours playing World of Goo instead.