Limbo
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
This should be pretty short. Prior to just a couple days ago, I had never played Limbo before.
Limbo first caught my eye when I was reading an old Game Informer magazine last year, and Inside was listed as one of the top 50 games that had come out that year. In the brief description of the game, Inside was described as a follow-up to 2010’s Limbo. I did a little research on Limbo, and it sounded interesting to me, so I made it a point to check it out someday. To my delight, I saw that GameFly had a collection disc that contained both Limbo and Inside on it. It went onto my queue immediately. Less than a week later, the disc arrived and I was popping it into my PS4.
Story:
This game has a terrific story! The plot is amazing, the cast of characters is well fleshed out, and there are so many jaw dropping twists and turns that you will never see coming. I haven’t been this invested in a game’s storyline in a long, long time.
…
…
...
I typed that with a straight face. Totally.
This game has no story, at least no story that I could determine. Playing as a mysterious little boy, you walk through black and white dream-inspired landscapes, solving puzzles and evading death. Your goal? I don’t know. The game never comes out and says what is going on. It is clear from the game’s stages that something is happening. Everywhere you look there are dead bodies, giant spider creatures, traps, signs that you are part of a civilization that has fallen apart. But does the game come out and explain what is happening? No.
All you do is walk from the left side of the screen to the right, trying to stay alive. Do this for a couple hours and the game unceremoniously just ends. Yeah. No answers, no explanation of what’s going on. Just oh hey thanks for playing kthxbye. It is a shame too, because I really liked observing all the mysterious sights as I worked my way through the game. It truly felt like there was something interesting going on that I should have been aware of. I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when the ending credits began to roll. I got absolutely nothing out of this game’s storyline.
I’ve read some theories online that the little boy is really trapped in purgatory. I’ve heard he’s looking to rescue his sister from the underworld. I’ve heard everything you see is some kind of deep symbolism, perhaps symbolizing the boy’s journey from childhood to adulthood. I’ve heard all kinds of things. No doubt, the game’s storyline is very much open to interpretation. But I don’t like that. I like things that make sense, regardless of whether or not they “look cool.” David Lynch, for example, is a film maker whose movies I have NEVER enjoyed. I am okay with leaving the ending open to interpretation (even though I don’t even like THAT much) but leaving the entire game open to interpretation is just too much to me.
Make some damn sense.
Gameplay:
Everything in this game kills you. Everything. Prepare to die constantly.
I remember looking at the trophy list before playing, and one of the accomplishments was to finish the game while dying less than five times. Piece of cake, I thought. It looked like a simple 2D side-scroller to me. I have always been good at these kinds of games. Boy, was I wrong. I’d say I wasn’t more than four or five minutes into the game when I hit the five death marker. You are going to die as you play this game, and you are going to die A LOT. You’ll just be walking along, completely oblivious. Oh look, there is a little spiky patch of grass. WRONG! You step on it and realize it is a bear trap. You’re dead. Next time around, you try to jump over the bear trap. Wrong move! It’s too long, and you just landed on it and died again. Maybe you’ll die a few more times trying to get around it. Then you realize you can use the action button to pull the bear trap to the left. There were actually two bear traps on the ground, side by side. Now that you’ve cleared a space between them, you can easily jump in the gap in the middle and get around both of them. Challenge complete.
Often, the environments hide other things that will kill you. Even at high alert I had a hard time staying alive. That harmless looking shadow in the background you thought you could just walk past? It turns into a spider’s pointy leg that stabs you. You’re dead. Walking across a bridge? Expect it to fall and drop you to your death with little to no warning whatsoever. Other times the ceiling will just randomly cave in on you. Dead. Think you can wade across that little pool of water? Nope. In this game if the water even so much as goes over your head, you die. Even if you are as cautious as humanly possible, you are going to die.
That’s not to say that this is a particularly frustrating or challenging game. When you die, the game starts you off just a few seconds from before your point of death. Loading times are at a minimum. You can just jump right back in and avoid the thing that killed you the first time. I enjoyed working through the puzzles and correcting my previous mistakes. It is one of the few redeeming qualities of this game.
Limbo took me a few hours to finish. I don’t know how much this game costs normally, but I would have felt majorly ripped off if I had paid 20 or 30 bucks for it. Not that I didn’t have a relatively decent time as I played. It’s just not worth that kind of money to me, not with its short length and nonexistent story.
Graphics:
I have to give credit where credit is due: the game looks really nice. I love the art style. I love the black and white color scheme. I love the haunted look and feel of the game. Limbo has a terrific ambience that other games have tried and failed to replicate.
I loved the character animations, and I must say, I loved the game’s gruesome deaths too. Some of them are so “oh my god!” that it actually detracts from any frustration you might feel from dying so many times. I wasn’t sure whether or not I would enjoy a game entirely in black and white, but this game definitely delivers visually.
Sound:
Play this game in the dark with your headphones on and lose yourself in the world of Limbo. This is a very immersive game that feels like you are playing through a haunted dream. All the little audio cues really add up to make this a believable fantasy environment. Everything sounds so subtle and peaceful. Wind blowing, birds chirping. But it is also dark and ominous at the same time. It is hard to explain. It just works.
I don’t think there is anything too memorable about the game’s actual soundtrack, but that doesn’t really matter here. You play for the ambiance, and this game has it in boatloads.
Overall:
I really felt like this game was sooooo close to being something special. Instead, it fell just short for me.
Its visuals and its audio are fantastic. There is no doubt that this is a very immersive game. At times it is a lot of fun. Your character walks a little too slowly for my taste, but that was never a huge issue for me. I didn’t even mind all the dying. I enjoyed learning from my mistakes and making things right the second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) time around. Never did the game truly feel unfair to me.
Did I hate my time with Limbo? Absolutely not. Do I think the game deserves all the accolades and high reviews scores thrown its way? Nope. It’s an okay game. And I will stress the word okay. It’s short. There isn’t much variety in its gameplay. The storyline is nonexistent. Not that there aren’t short 2D platformers out there with poor/non-existent storylines (see Castlevania, Mario, etc), but those games were iconic and FUN. As much as I liked the atmosphere Limbo created, it doesn’t exactly shout out GOOD HAPPY FUN TIME!! to me. I found the whole game to be completely…. okay. I simply don’t understand why the makers of the game created such a rich, interesting world, but then went nowhere with the story. There was so much potential for an excellent game here. Maybe that is why I am struggling to give it a good score. The potential this game had was so strong, and I can’t help but feel a little bit let down by the end result.
When I grade games, I mainly factor in how much fun I had with the game, and how willing I would be to play the game again someday. While I admit that this game is not awful, I just can’t see myself ever coming back to it again.
Final Score:
C-
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