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Limbo
Text Review
Nothing breaks the immersion in Limbo. The game simply begins, with a boy lying down in a stark black and white world, when his bright white eyes open. There is no reminder on screen of what to do, where to go, or any kind of tutorial. Chapter saves and checkpoints are never indicated on screen.
Limbo does not even use meters of any kind. It lets the player remain as lost and confused as the unidentified boy they control. As you walk right, almost instinctively in these modern gaming times, you learn by experimentation. Beyond basic movement, the boy has two functions: grab and jump. How the game world utilizes and integrates these functions is how Limbo becomes something special.
Limbo is a platform/puzzle title, although simply categorizing it seems to cheapen the experience. This is a game that toys with the audience, playfully praying on their familiarity. This world exists to prevent the boy from reaching his goal, as many games do, but it does so in a way that this slowly changing mechanically sound environment seems alive. Whereas one switch will save you from a smashing device, stepping on the next will cause the machine to slam down.
Limbo appropriately exists in more of a realm than a world, at least which seems to be the proper terminology for what is happening here. There are hints of reality, including a trek across an electrified Hotel sign, generating immense scale and danger. Everything is fresh in Limbo; nothing repeats. Every challenge, from the familiar crate pulling to the dizzying, screen-spinning switches, are fresh and new.
It opens itself to a child-like sense of wonder and explanation, although from this viewpoint, the wonder elicited is disturbing and terrifying, more so since you never learn where you are or why. Pulling switches takes a player back to their own childhood, the need to touch and explore just to see stuff work. The visuals, the gorgeous added grain filter adding so much, generates depth to this flat world, the machinery clanging, switching, and moving deep into the frame. It's alive, even if the boy may not be.
Any death caused by the boy is purely defensive, and always wrapped up in some logical puzzle. It's as if he shows no aggressiveness, just a need to survive and rescue his sister, radically deviating from the video game norm of big and bigger guns. It is accessible because of this, requiring little in the way of standard video game knowledge, just a hint of twitch as the mind games continue.
Limbo is never that challenging. Puzzles exist to impede progress, require a small train of thought, and then move on. They seem to exist as a way to show off this realm/world/otherworldly place, how it works, and the wonder of it all. Keeping the player moving with minimal frustration is the goal, and the design is such that it works beautifully.
The only misguided choice is the boy's many deaths. Graphically mutilated on saw blades, skewered by a giant spider, falling onto spikes, or being zapped by electricity is so entirely overdone, it breaks from what seems to be something serious and artful. This is an industry where graphic death is treated as comical, the zanier it is the better, yet watching the boy's head flail about in rotating gravity seems wrong or misguided, out of place in such a strict, intricate design. It doesn't fit, especially as death is discreetly handled as something dramatic in many backgrounds.
That should not detract from what is, in nearly every way, video gaming at its purest.
- Matt Paprocki
Developer: PlayDead Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Limbo does not even use meters of any kind. It lets the player remain as lost and confused as the unidentified boy they control. As you walk right, almost instinctively in these modern gaming times, you learn by experimentation. Beyond basic movement, the boy has two functions: grab and jump. How the game world utilizes and integrates these functions is how Limbo becomes something special.
Limbo is a platform/puzzle title, although simply categorizing it seems to cheapen the experience. This is a game that toys with the audience, playfully praying on their familiarity. This world exists to prevent the boy from reaching his goal, as many games do, but it does so in a way that this slowly changing mechanically sound environment seems alive. Whereas one switch will save you from a smashing device, stepping on the next will cause the machine to slam down.
Limbo appropriately exists in more of a realm than a world, at least which seems to be the proper terminology for what is happening here. There are hints of reality, including a trek across an electrified Hotel sign, generating immense scale and danger. Everything is fresh in Limbo; nothing repeats. Every challenge, from the familiar crate pulling to the dizzying, screen-spinning switches, are fresh and new.
It opens itself to a child-like sense of wonder and explanation, although from this viewpoint, the wonder elicited is disturbing and terrifying, more so since you never learn where you are or why. Pulling switches takes a player back to their own childhood, the need to touch and explore just to see stuff work. The visuals, the gorgeous added grain filter adding so much, generates depth to this flat world, the machinery clanging, switching, and moving deep into the frame. It's alive, even if the boy may not be.
Any death caused by the boy is purely defensive, and always wrapped up in some logical puzzle. It's as if he shows no aggressiveness, just a need to survive and rescue his sister, radically deviating from the video game norm of big and bigger guns. It is accessible because of this, requiring little in the way of standard video game knowledge, just a hint of twitch as the mind games continue.
Limbo is never that challenging. Puzzles exist to impede progress, require a small train of thought, and then move on. They seem to exist as a way to show off this realm/world/otherworldly place, how it works, and the wonder of it all. Keeping the player moving with minimal frustration is the goal, and the design is such that it works beautifully.
The only misguided choice is the boy's many deaths. Graphically mutilated on saw blades, skewered by a giant spider, falling onto spikes, or being zapped by electricity is so entirely overdone, it breaks from what seems to be something serious and artful. This is an industry where graphic death is treated as comical, the zanier it is the better, yet watching the boy's head flail about in rotating gravity seems wrong or misguided, out of place in such a strict, intricate design. It doesn't fit, especially as death is discreetly handled as something dramatic in many backgrounds.
That should not detract from what is, in nearly every way, video gaming at its purest.
- Matt Paprocki
Developer: PlayDead Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Platform(s): Xbox 360
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