Penumbra (video game series)/YMMV

• Crowning Music of Awesome : Most of Mikko Tarmia's score for the series, including the main themes.
• Fan Discontinuity / Dolled-Up Installment: The Requiem expansion according to many fans. The ending of Black Plague is self-sufficient, and Requiem feels more like a weird Portal ripoff with tacked-on closure to some side plots, than a proper Penumbra game. While preserving the horror and Mind Screw atmosphere of the first two titles, the absence of a real physical threat to the player kills what little interest there could be in this purely puzzle-solving adventure.
• Fridge Horror: Overture alone has at least three areas of small abandoned rooms, where people were forced to stay and live underground from a span of weeks to entire years. All that in horribly cramped conditions, with a lack of any appropriate space and furniture for long-term habitation. Red's story is a particularly horryfying case of this...
• Hell Is That Noise: Happens nearly constantly. Still think you won't get scared? Think again.
• Player Punch / Heroic BSOD / My God, What Have I Done?: Remember how Clarence can give you hallucinations? When Amabel's about to cure you, he makes it look like she's infected so you'll kill her. This also marks Clarence's Moral Event Horizon, and the point where Philip becomes absolutely determined to kill him.
  • For the scene in all its BSOD glory, watch from 5:42 to 7:30. Major spoilers are in store, though.
  • Phillip also agrees to willingly incinerate Red at the end of Overture to free him of his suffering. But after he hears Red's gruesome last screams and pulls the key he needed from Red's ashes, he nearly suffers a Heroic BSOD.
• Retroactive Recognition: A Video Game example. After Amnesia the Dark Descent did so well both critically and commercially, many of Frictional's newer fans have discovered the Penumbra series and raised it to more mainstream recognition from its humble indie roots.
• What an Idiot!: Philip on himself in the email.