LogFAQs > #968265571

LIMBO (XBLA)

LIMBO is a well-loved game. It's got a 90 on Metacritic and won a whole bunch of awards. Playing it now, I think that has to be put in the context of 2010. Maybe it would still work now, but I feel like LIMBO lives mostly off off the idea of video games as an art form. Aside from the auteur nature, it doesn't have that much going for it.

LIMBO plays like pretty much any puzzle-platformer. It doesn't have a particular mechanic it can call its own; there's box moving, timers, magnetic/gravity play,... One mechanic that is maybe more unique is how some levels rotate and you constantly have to adapt to the wall becoming the floor becoming the ceiling, but its not like LIMBO takes ownership of this mechanic and presents it as its thing. Neither does it do this with the brain bug mechanic where you're forced into a specific direction until you hit sunlight or a ceiling...thing eats the brain bug off your head. These mechanics are tied to a set of levels and don't really appear afterwards.

It doesn't help that the brain bug mechanic is pretty annoying too. Beyond the gameplay aspect of it, it slows down your nameless main character, who is already kind of slow. This is where more of that auteur nature of LIMBO comes into play; for the dark and dreary setting, the slowness of the child adds to the feeling of dread, but there's sometimes when you're trying to figure stuff out or have to redo a segment because you died a couple of times where it's just grating and a chore.

It hits the right notes for a puzzle platformer; solving a puzzle gives a good feeling! However, there's other puzzles where the solution just didn't feel right. I couldn't rightfully say whether I didn't like them because they frustrated me or if they were designed poorly (relative to the rest of the game), but some did not give me a feeling of "I should've figured that out", but more along the lines of "They expected me to figure that out?".

On a technical level is where the game attains its identity. There is only black and white, and no sound except maybe for an oppressive drone or the sound of insects and machinery. Every death is displayed pretty gruesomely; given the name of the game, it seems like a very specific choice, beyond just being gruesome for the fun of it.

That art direction ties into the art-nature of this game. It is very distinctive, with the eyes of the main character also being the only eyes you see in the game. Every other human figure that appears is merely a silhouette. The bugs don't have eyes either. The game doesn't have a story, beyond what you make of it as you play. There's no codex, no cutscenes, just small implications for people to figure out themselves.

I figured that this game was going to blow me away. It didn't. It's not a bad game by any means, but this kind of artsy is not really my thing. Kentucky Route Zero is a game where the art-nature hit me a lot more, and I was a lot more invested in that world. This was a nice distraction, but I'm thankful it was a short experience, because I don't know how positive I would've felt if it had dragged on.