Limbo is a simple game, with simple objectives, a simple art style, and a simple soundtrack. Only one puzzle stumped me for longer than ten minutes, the ending explains nothing and the story is seemingly non-existent. The game lasted about four hours but looking at Youtube, people have done speed runs of about one hour.
So far, not a great review technically. In practice however, Limbo is a shining example of ‘less is more’.
Firstly I’d like to address the price point issue here as it seems to be a strong reason people give for not purchasing the game. 1200 MS points = £10.28 (roughly). I got about three to four hours from Limbo on my first run (not going to count replay time here). A retail game costs roughly £40 in the UK and lasts anything between eight and fifteen hours on average. It’s simple maths really, multiply the price of Limbo by four to roughly match retail price at £40, and if you do the same with the time to complete you will be left with a twelve to sixteen hour game for £40. When put into perspective, the price is actually comparable to most retail titles and I can guarantee there is more imagination and creativity in Limbo than half the games out there. People will happily drop £40 on the latest Tiger Woods game despite it having virtually no advancements compared to the last game, yet Limbo is too expensive for an XBLA title? Give me a break. I’d strongly suggest giving the demo a spin before making any rash decisions.
OK, so with that out of the way lets talk a little about the game now.
The game has such a striking art style it is hard not to be intrigued. Ever since I saw the first screenshot released I was convinced I’d buy this game based on the graphics alone. Not often do games strip back the level of graphics to this degree, but it really works for Limbo. The game tries to create a very bleak atmosphere and the art style only serves to enhance that tenfold. The same can be said of the soundtrack, what little there is of one (well that is technically wrong as you will always hear ambient/background noise no matter where you are in the game, be it an off key horn or the increasing volume of static noise during the spider sections). Every sound in Limbo is designed to put you on edge and it synchs so well with the gameplay that it’s often easy to forget there is any soundtrack at all. The only rest you get from the audible assault on the senses is after the various tense world turning/flooding/chase elements are over, when the ambient sound becomes almost soothing in comparison to the tension laden moments you just experienced. There are no traditional pieces of music, only atmospheric noise that is sometimes the equivalent of running fingernails down the chalkboard of your soul… depending how immersed you allow yourself to become anyway.
Talking of immersion, personally I like to give myself over to games like this, and I genuinely feel the only way to play Limbo is at night, in the dark, with all the curtains shut. I played Silent Hill 1 with a friend in the same way and I think it added so much more to our experience of the game that without that element, I would still have enjoyed it, just not in the same way. I know people often don’t play games in this manner so a lot of this will probably go over peoples heads or be mocked and ridiculed, but I don’t care and I’m positive anyone who plays these types of games in the same way will understand just what I’m talking about.
Puzzle-wize, Limbo has some of the freshest and imaginative takes on the age old platform/puzzle formula’s I have seen in some time. The game takes place over three distinct sections with each featuring appropriately themed puzzles to the area you are in. The forest section has you avoiding man-traps, spider webs, and in some of the tenser moments of the game (for arachnophobes anyway) you will be running for your life from a giant spider. The deserted city section contains lots of water based puzzles as much of the environment has been flooded, whereas the abandoned factory area features a lot of physics based puzzles involving saw blades and conveyor belts. The different areas enable an interesting mix of puzzles and before anything begins to feel too repetitive you are experiencing something new to wrap your head around. The pacing is superb although personally, I would have liked to see more of the forest areas as that was hands down my favourite area. Not only in terms of puzzles but in terms of questions.
The forest area for example is the only section of the game you will encounter other living things. Other children feature heavily here, firing what I can only assume are pea shooter style weapons, operating mechanical spider legs, rolling flaming tires down on you from above. Who these children are and why they are opposing the player is never made clear. Neither are the repeated instances of tree houses in the first, middle and very end sections of the game. The title screen features a tree house which leads me to believe there is some significance there, but this is half the fun of Limbo. The game asks more than it answers, and yet it asks nothing. The human mind is geared to enjoy solving puzzles and the game not only has these by the dozen but it’s very essence, themes and settings raise many questions that beg to be answered.
I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, 2001 Space Odyssey, Phantasm… I’ve always been interested in media that leaves questions to be pondered over even if there are no answers to be found. The human mind automatically attempts to fill in the blanks even when not required to and whether by design or accident, I think Limbo takes advantage of this psychological element of the human brain very well. I realise however, this is not everyone’s cup of tea, and as a result many have simply dismissed the game as an attempt to be ‘arty’ and ‘hip’ as many other indie games have attempted. To these people I would urge them to ignore this element and simply enjoy it as a puzzle/platform game. There is a lot of fun to be had here even if you are not intrigued by the same elements that I am.
In my opinion Limbo is one of the freshest, imaginative games to release in recent years. Even if you wait for the price to come down, or only give the demo a spin, I’d strongly recommend this to anyone in possession of an Xbox and a spare 1200 MS points. It really is that good.
