LIMBO Game Review

My Purchase:

I originally found this game on the Xbox 360 marketplace. It is my earliest recollection of an 'indie' game, and from the outside it looks pretty basic. I recall playing the demo and finishing it thinking ,"Wow, this game actually has something going for it.". I didn't buy it on the marketplace sadly due to financial reasons and lack of space on my 20 GB hard drive. I recently bought the Humble Indie Bundle 9, and happened to come across this game. I downloaded the small 66 MB game and began my journey in the Limbo, and what a journey it was!

Gameplay:
Limbo in itself is a very simplistic game from the outside. Limbo is a 2D platformer game that literally requires the player to only use two buttons and a joystick. At first, I thought the game would be dry and monotonous due to the lack of color and the minimalistic approach when it came to the controls, but it surprisingly helped me concentrate on the puzzles at hand and really made me think about using my surroundings to progress further in the game. The lack of color also interested me because the game plays around with changing the shade of gray and black to give it a certain depth that piqued my interest. The game starts off with very simple challenges and slowly builds up the difficulty there after. After progressing past the point of the demo, I found myself sitting there for ten or so minutes analyzing the puzzle and subsequently solving it, a practice I haven't done in quite a while when it comes to platformer games. Traditionally, platformer games show you your goal and the path you will essentially follow, given a small margin for error here or there in terms of how high or low you jump. In Limbo, you see where you have to go, but you also see various obstacles and switches that have to be activated and understood in order to get where you want to go. In this respect, it was very Portal- esque and I caught myself comparing it to Portal about 4/5ths of the way through the game.

As the levels increase in difficulty, the game developers start to throw more monkey wrenches at you such as gravity switches, trip wires that activate automated machine guns, spinning gears that move rapidly and will hack you into bits without the proper caution, and electrical barriers. All of these obstacles are meant to hinder your progress, but with the right amount of logic, you are able to surpass all and get your nameless character to the end of the Limbo, which if I am not mistaken, derives from Limbus in Latin which means edge. The level selector menu is very accurate and incremental. Every puzzle is a level, and you can easily jump back to a previous level without any issues, something I enjoyed deeply due to the fact that I may want to come back and play this game again in the future, and I would dislike if I had to start all the way from the beginning if I wanted to get to my favorite level in the game which could be half way into the plot.

Speaking of plot, the game lacks a long plot, but again, it works for a game like Limbo. There is nothing but a bleak intro that presents the following statement, "Unsure of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo". Not the cheeriest of intros right? Regardless, it gives you just enough basis to understand what you're supposed to be doing and why, something the platformer game Rush Bros. lacked. (See my review for Rush Bros at the bottom of this review.)

Lastly, it should be noted that despite the fact the game is in black and white, and despite the fact that it is a 2D game, there is gore and blood. You can hacked up into pieces via sharp blades. You lose your head from electrocution, and you can have your arms and legs snapped off by large magnetic blocks of doom. With all of that in mind, it's 2D, and it isn't very graphic or nauseating... it isn't Outlast.

Controls:

 Seeing as how I originally played this on the Xbox 360 using an Xbox 360 controller, I figured I should continue that and use the controller for the PC version. With that in mind, the mechanics of the game are simple. You walk/run to move left and right and you jump to avoid obstacles. You can also hang onto the edges of platforms, and turn switches on and off. Other than that, you have no other options in terms of controls, but to be fair, that is all you really need to play this game. I actually found myself pressing extra buttons because I am so used to play games with full gamepad support, and not just two buttons and a joystick. The controls on their own feel fine and they work perfectly well when it comes to the game.

Overall this game is a 8.5/10! I really enjoyed this game. I beat it in 6 hours and felt that although it could have been a little bit longer, cutting it off early while the game is still good is better than adding excess and dampening the game. I liked the minimalistic approach to the game and seriously enjoyed the puzzles in the game. I didn't think I'd actually have to think about some of these puzzles, but I was quickly proven wrong an hour and a half into the game. I recommend this game to anyone that likes platformers and wants a challenge. This game could be easily be beaten in a day, but I guarantee that it'll be a great day!