XBLA Live Review: Limbo
“Gripping. Atmospheric…A Real Treat!”
An XboxHornet Review by WDesm.
Limbo is a dark and lonely place. As a young boy, your task is to find your sister. This simple task is made both fiendishly difficult and nightmarishly atmospheric by the roadblocks you’ll encounter: From everything to bear traps that rip your limbs off, to deep, dark lakes that you silently drown in, Limbo is not a place of rainbows and smiles. And I simply couldn’t put it down. Read on to learn more about the start of Summer of Arcade, and the darkest puzzle-platformer to grace XBLA.
In Limbo, you start in the middle of a forest, with everything dark and muted around you. As you begin to walk around, searching for your sister, you quickly come up across your first grizzly death scene: In Limbo, failing any puzzle will result in your death, usually in a rather visual (though still black and white) way, but will only set you back two or three seconds in gameplay, as invisible checkpoints are constantly saving your progress. I would argue that Limbo, like Braid from two years ago, followed “good level design philosophy“, as Limbo doesn’t require reading a manual, an explanatory opening cutscene, or a tutorial stage – as puzzles get more complicated, the gameplay slowly expands and evolves to include sliding crates, switches, and deeper interactive environments (such as rotating the entire screen) to keep gamers thinking on their toes. The puzzles are varied, and even included some minor physics, be they fluid-based (raising water levels to have bridges float into place), gravity-based, or even magnetic. In addition, the game’s brutal (and repeated) deadly puzzles are offset by the forgiving checkpoint system, so learning the ins-and-outs of a puzzle are never impossible for the player.
Despite having a reasonable learning curve, Limbo has its hard points – over the course of my first playthrough, I ended up dying over sixty times. For those completionists, there is an achievement for beating the game in one sitting with under five deaths – don’t expect to pull that stunt off on your first playthrough though: even if you perfectly understood every puzzle on your first attempt, it would still be a trick to master every platformer jump near-flawlessly.
The atmosphere of Limbo is truly top-notch – the entire game is high def dark, depressing, and foreboding: Without giving away any specific details or spoilers, there were parts of Limbo that were impressively creepy as well as tense and time-sensitive, all of which served fantastically to keep that atmosphere thick and oppressive. The other entities in Limbo, again, I’ll refrain from specifics, also serve to keep you feeling alone and vulnerable as you work through the puzzles.
Because of the checkpoint system, the game is not especially difficult, and I was able to clear it from start to finish in a single evening: Admittedly, I did not 100% complete the game, but I did get to the end credits (Completing the game is considered being 75% done – small orbs are hidden throughout the entire game, usually in nigh-impossible spots to get to, requiring pre-planning, perfect timing, and extreme puzzle manipulation. These orbs unlock extra percentages, as well as most of the achievements). The game takes both puzzle skills and platforming ability, and for those that have both, the included leaderboards offer a chance to show how quickly, easily, and flawlessly you can 100% limbo.
Everyone loves concept art!
The length of the game will probably be the big stopping block for gamers: While no-one will dispute the artistic quality of the game, some would argue that it just seems too short to put a $15 price tag on it. I would disagree, as the quality of the game more than merits the price of a movie and popcorn, and is just as gripping and moody as any recent horror/suspense movie out there. For those still not convinced of the game’s depth, the game also includes the aforementioned competitive leaderboards, tricky achievements, and even an adorable Limbo Creature unlock for your Avatar.
Limbo pulls out all the stops to be a dark and atmospheric game, and this serves as a fantastic background to explore and solve a variety of fiendish-yet-fair puzzles.
Game Score: 9/10.
Download a free demo of the game here.
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