Limbo Review

The summer always seems to be the time to bring out the arcade big-hitters, and this year is looking to be no different. While good Retail games are few and fair between, the downloadable gems just keep on coming. DeathSpank whipped our consoles last week. Now it’s Limbo’s turn. Being one of the most anticipated titles, winning awards left right and centre. Limbo has a lot of live up to. But does Limbo have what it takes to beat Braid off the top spot of puzzle-platformers?

Limbo
Developer: Playdead
Price: 1200 MSP
Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed)

The premise is simple, find your sister in the hellish place called Limbo. Not that the game tells you any of this, you just jump straight in and keep on moving forward. I didn’t mind this lack of plot, it’s not the story that keeps you interested in the game. It is it’s art style and puzzles that keep you coming back and carrying on. It’s control scheme is also simple just being comprised of 2 buttons, A and X. The game starts off as a eerie platformer with light puzzle elements. The first half is also the part where you will encounter a variety of different people and things ranging from native humans and giant spiders. You must find inventive and original ways of combating your enemies, often without laying a finger on them yourself. As the game progress things slowly changes and becomes very puzzle heavy and will require precise timing. Areas become a playground puzzle for you to solve. The whole game takes this approach but it becomes more apparent as you get further into it. What starts off with the feeling of being watched and hunted later just turns into the environment wanting to kill you. If I was to try and find criticisms with how the game plays, I wish the game focused more on other people or animals trying to kill you. The first half of the game is full of small frights, the giant spider for example serves as a great highlight to this. He is a boss like character who follows and tries to kill you every now and then, the scene where he is chasing you makes a great situation of how you must think quickly and take advantage of the environment around you. I wish the game had more moments like that.

Despite being a game with such a simple premise, it sure does a lot with it. Few puzzles are ever similar, you start off as simple avoiding and making use of traps later turns into changing the areas gravity around you in order to advance. The game doesn’t give you any indication of what to do, you just move forward and try and work it out yourself. Often by means of trial and error.This isn’t really a problem except for one moment near the end of the game. In order to save me from spoiling it for you I’ll just say, I worked way too harder and looked too much into my surroundings to solve an area just for the answer to be as simple as flipping a switch while in the air. I had no idea that the the sign could be switched, nothing about it looked like it was a switch. I spend half an hour trying to do this impossible jump only for it to be the wrong thing. To be fair this was the only instants out of my whole experience with Limbo. For the most part this lack of direction works perfectly and is the sole factor as to why Limbo is different to most Puzzle-platformers. It doesn’t throw hard concepts or gimmicks at you. It’s a straight up bare bones puzzle-platformer with a whole lot of charm and is very clever.

For a puzzle game is it difficult? If you are looking for painful sadistic puzzles much like the crazy ROM hacks then you might want to look somewhere else. For the most part Limbo is about atmosphere. That’s not to say Limbo is easy, far from it. You will die many many times, sometimes several dozen times on the same puzzle. Maybe you messed up the momentum for a jump or didn’t see that bear trap. Towards the end most of the puzzles are control snappingly difficult but thankfully you are given a forgiving checkpoint system. Once you’ve completed a puzzle you will never have to go back to it, for the most part. Nor is there any penalty for dying other than the obvious. The game has a nice difficulty curve and most puzzles can be solved just by looking back and thinking for a moment. Needless to say they are clever and well thought out.

Artistically Limbo is both simple and brilliant with a unique silhouette style. Everything suits the atmosphere perfectly, from the eerie woods to sewers, even thn minimalistic soundtrack helps. It’s also surprisingly evil with a real black comedy feel. The deaths can be gruesome and often savage but you can’t help but laugh. Sometimes you will want to die just so you can see what will happen to the poor boy. Despite being purely black and white, it looks gorgeous and looks best when playing alone in a dark room. It’s also artistic without being pretentious, somewhat of a victory for Indie games of this caliber.

You will complete the game in only a few hours, but you may want to go back and try and find all the achievements. Other than that, your mileage will vary on how much you love these type of games. While some of the puzzles may have alternate ways of completing them. Once you’ve worked them out the first time, it’s not quite the same the second time round. Also it’s price might be a little on the high side, at around $15 you may think that such a title isn’t worth that sort of price tag. But you are wrong (though 800 points would be nice).

Limbo is easily worth it’s price, there is nothing quite like it. Never has a game shown me so many emotions in such a small space of time. From fear, to anger, to laughter. It’s a brilliant experience from beginning to end. If you loved Braid, you will love this. If you didn’t? Still give this a try you might find a place in your heart for this, the Nighty Night of games.

The Final Word
Limbo is a dark little gem. It’s both simplistic and deep with a dark sense of humour. It’s a brilliantly crafted title that needs to be experienced.

– MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent