Limbo

DLC Review from AJ - Tuesday, 20 July 2010 @ 8:26pm

Limbo is an Indie release by a mob called Playdead in Denmark. It's already won a string of awards from E3 and the Independent Games Festival earlier this year, and the game isn't even out yet. Believe me when I tell you it deserves all the accolades it has already received and will certainly receive in the future.

Limbo is a distinctly Indie game. I hate using that term by the way, but in this case it fits. Games like Limbo don't get made by big studios. It would be deemed far too risky and too...interesting. There is no colour. There is no voice acting, no intro, no immediately obvious story, no instructions and no tutorial. Just a black and white screen with a glowing eyed boy on his way to somewhere unknown. You start off flat on your back with no clue as what to do or where to go.

Jump...to your doom?

The game only uses the A and B buttons and the control stick. There are no complex button presses or moves to learn. Just start running to the right of screen, and work it out as you go. The simplicity of the controls belies the complexity of the game itself, which features a raft of fiendish puzzles, traps, devices and enemies. Suffice to say, a lot can be done with just two buttons. Whilst at its heart Limbo is a platform game, it is much more. It is also a complex puzzle game with a deep and haunting mystery.

For 99% of the game, you have no real idea of what the story is about. The title itself is about the only hint, along with any marketing blurbs you may have read. "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO. Explore a unique and puzzling world to discover your sister’s fate". As far as plot goes, that's about the extent of it. There aren't a lot of extra plot elements along the way either. All you know is that you have go find your sister, and there is a seemingly never ending array of things determined to kill you along the way. Throughout the game the protagonist struggles his way through an engaging world which is more than a little reminiscent of Fritz Lang's dystopian masterpiece, Metropolis. The hazy black and white world slips in and out of focus as if filmed in the 1920s. The background slips from deathly caves and forests to rooftops straight out of World War 1 era Europe to gigantic machinery fit for some unknown evil purpose. For much of the game there is nothing but silence, the lack of voice acting and subtle use of music and sound only adds to the illusion of this being some sort of futuristic 1920's futuristic sci-fi horror. The effect engages the user and draws the player further and further into this wonderfully dark and sinister world.

Run Fatboy Run!

One thing that is definitely worth noting is that you really must play this game with the sound on. The louder the better. The sound is at least 50% of the total enjoyment value of Limbo. The eerie silence is only eerie when you contrast it to the clunk of machinery, the pounding of rain and the sound of giant arachnids. I think this game has more "death" sounds than just about any game I can think of. It's says a lot not only for the audio, but the sheer number of ways your character can meet their doom. Bones crunch, guts splatter and skin fries, all exactly as spine tingling as you'd expect. Not only that, but many puzzles in the game are only solvable by using sound. In several instances, what you're doing on screen relies heavily on something going on off screen. It may be waiting for an object to fall, for a piece of machinery to start or for a lift to reach its zenith. All of these things rely on sitting, waiting and listening. Towards the end, Limbo almost becomes a rhythm game, where the path to the finish requires almost precision timing on the B button. Of course when you finally do make your way to the finish, the final moments of the game are goosebump inducing.

So quiet.....

Of course, the main gameplay element of Limbo is the puzzles. Many of these are simple timing puzzles, whereby you wait for the requisite length of time before jumping through a succession of obstacles. To succeed, all you need to do is time the first jump right and the rest will just happen naturally. At least, that's how it starts off. As the game moves on you'll be taunted by gravity puzzles, water puzzles, lever puzzles, gear turning puzzles and even the obligatory box stacking puzzle. Of course, defining any one of Limbo's puzzles into one of these categories would be doing the game a severe injustice. The game's use of simple levers, boxes, gears and water never ceases to amaze and excite. When a solution becomes apparent you wonder how you could ever have worked it out on your own, and yet there it is...solved. Limbo's masterstroke is providing you with enough learning through successive puzzles to rarely leave you in a position where you feel you need to give up, but still manages to always provides a challenge. Quite often the end goal is quite clear, and often even the means of achieving that goal is obvious, it's just a matter of working out how to get Part A to fit into Part B.

Limbo isn't as "innocent" as it first appears

The most enjoyable part of Limbo, however, is failing. Failure is as critical to Limbo as success. Many of the puzzles are quite impossible to defeat on the first attempt. You need to die to see the result of certain actions and the often complex system of events which follows. Once you know the result, you learn how to overcome it. Dying, unlike in many games, has you set right back in front of your failure point allowing you to quickly try again. There is never a moment where you have to struggle back from Point A to Point Z only to fail all over again and make the tedious trek back to the puzzle over and over. Death is quick, painless and more often than not, highly entertaining. This poor little boy who never speaks a word, also never complains as he is repeatedly impaled, sliced, burnt, ripped apart, ground into to a pulp, electrocuted, shot, dropped from great heights, drowned, eaten, spiked and squished.

Pros

Wonderful art and style. Engaging and immersive sound and environment. Dastardly puzzles that help you learn to bet them as you repeatedly fail. Death is always rewarding, and never feels unjust.

Cons

Without sound at a fairly reasonable volume (or to the hearing impaired), the game is totally unplayable.