LIMBO
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 10:24PM  |
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| Available on: Xbox 360 Genre: Puzzle-based Platformer Published by: Microsoft Developed by: Playdead |
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So, LIMBO is a challenging puzzle-based platformer that recently debuted on Xbox Live Arcade. I first got hands on with this game at GDC this year and was instantly curious about it. It’s got this mysterious black and white look so it that drew in my attention. In Limbo you play as this scrawny silhouette of a little boy in this mischievous dusky forest. I realized right off the bat there’s really only 2 buttons that do anything in the game which is jump and grab – simple, and sometimes less is more. (seems to be a theme of the game, from the graphics, to the clues, to the controls...) I marched onward further into the world and crossed paths with an animal trap that tore me up into ground beef and spat out my decapitated head. It was then that I fell in love with Limbo.
The black and white world is so beautiful and the art style is perfect for imitating a depressing and lonely dream. You play as this little weak, tiny boy who just can’t get a break in search for his little sister who has been summoned into Limbo. (I honestly couldn’t tell you the storyline if I didn’t read or hear about it because there is no dialog or text throughout the entire game.) To be honest I had a slightly difficult time empathizing with this child when he has no face; he feels eerie, like I’m controlling some sort of spectre. I understand they were going as simple as they could in this game while it worked I would have hoped for a bit more implied narrative throughout.
Anyways, throughout his search you encounter puzzle scenarios which always result in a deadly situation if you aren’t careful. Each “room” is specifically designed to mess with your head and there are deadly traps all throughout the game that you need to avoid in any manner possible. Props such as boxes and dead carcasses are given to you occasionally that mix up those relatively complicated puzzles. (Having someone there helping me with ideas on how to get passed something made the game more interactive; it was almost a full co-op game because of this which added to the experience.)
There is no way you will play through this game and ace it all the way through on the first try. You WILL die and when you do you won’t feel disappointed. The kid has this squishy feel to him – he’s very fragile – he gets repeatedly smooshed as if he were a bug. Here is a game I didn’t mind playing as a clumsy goof which felt right to me as I’m a total klutz IRL.
Seriously. I have bruises and coffee tables are my arch nemeseseses.
Back to the game; I enjoyed dying and seeing my body get torn into pieces, my brains splatter, limbs sliced off, and my intestines tossed all over the place like an exploded Piñata. (Note to parents that the title is pretty disturbing and not fully suitable for kids!) After a while it started to become a mini game for me to purposely see that I die every way possible. In fact, there is an achievement to beat it in one sitting without dying more than 5 times - that’s one I know I’ll never get around to achieving! Learn by death works in this game only because Playdead was very generous on the save points so I could repeat a section and not get annoyed trying it again when I was respawned. This was essential to enjoying the title.
Note that about two thirds into the game the level difficulty spiked greatly and you may toss your controller at some of the later puzzles; by the time I was nearing the end I was almost frustrated and wanted to give up. Luckily I never had to refer back to youtube for help getting through something unlike other recent XBLA platform puzzlers.
Overall I think it was a fun, cutesy game worth the 15 bucks with a dark edge that deserves to be played by everyone mature enough to handle the graphic violence. It’ll take between 3-5 hours to play through it depending on your attention span, and roughly about 20-30 nasty, yet somehow satisfying deaths.
Reader Comments (3)
Very nice review! Was actually going to skip this game completely, but now I think I'll give it a shot!
I love how this game looks. Thank you for the review; you've definitely helped pique my interest towars this game. I'm gonna check it out.
this is one of the best games in the last years, in fact Viagra Online give to this game a perfect qualification in all the aspects, thanks for the review dude.