L-emo-bo
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Xbox Live Arcade | 8.00 |
| Overall | 8.00 |
|
Limbo is a single player downloadable game that was created by Denmark's Playdead Studios and is exclusively available on XBox Live Arcade for 1200 pts (or roughly £11). The game has a very distinctive and a very striking look and art-style which is the thing that personally first drew me to it. It consists entirely of imagery in monochrome greyscale and implements light/shadow and film grain to very good effect. As a result Limbo looks very dark, very sombre, very desolate. The sound design is similarly striking in that it is made up of very minimal dark ambient sounds and field sounds. This along with the visuals help to create an atmosphere so brooding and so dense you could cut it with a knife. The game very much feels like an art-house animation project. But, it's not a film, it's a game. So what about the gameplay? Limbo plays like a 2D, side-scrolling platformer with a heavy emphasis on environmental puzzles. You control a nameless little boy and through the course of the game you will have to negotiate jumping over obstacles and onto platforms, avoiding traps and hazards and using them to your advantage to defeat an enemy or clear a path. You will have to use crates and switches (either electro-magnetic or gravity flipping) to solve puzzles and make your way forward. The controls are extremely simple. You move left and right, jump and grab on objects to push and pull them. Almost identical to controlling a sack-boy (and equally floaty!). It has a nice mix of gameplay elements that comes together quite well to make the game enjoyable and satisfying to play. It is not a difficult game with the exception of one or two somewhat devious puzzles in the latter parts of the game. The game it most closely resembles for me is Tower of Shadow, or the old PC games such as Prince of Persia and Another World (Out of this World). It doesn't do anything remarkably new or innovative in this department though but few games do. However despite the game's relative lack of difficulty, you (the little boy you play as) will die. You will die many times and every time you will watch a very gruesome and heart wrenching death animation. You will be dismembered, you will be impaled, you will be decapitated, you will be electrocuted, you will drown, you will be crashed, you will fall to your death, you will have your limbs severed, you will be turned into a bloody pulp ... This very much feels like a design choice on the part of the developers. You won't see the bear trap until it cuts you in half - but you will see it the second time around. You won't know that flipping a switch will not open the door but instead send a jolt of current through you - but you will know that the second time. See the pattern? So you will die a lot, that is how you will be introduced to almost every new trap or obstacle. However the game has very frequent checkpoints, so dying is not such a big deal, unless you're squeamish. There is virtually no story. You wake up as this nameless boy in this dark wooded area. There is no narrative, you just move to the right. You encounter some other boys who are hostile and try to kill you... and you find others who have met that fate already either hanging from gallows or floating in water. At that point the game has a "Lord of the Flies" feeling to it. The "bad boys" however just set traps and keep running onwards, there is no confrontation (or explanation). After you get out of the forest you enter a sort of ghost town environment, with derelict buildings and industrial environments. Then it all comes to a sudden and abrupt ending and you see the credits roll (There is one final scene which I will not describe just in case it is considered a spoiler). Nothing is explained or resolved and you are none the wiser than when you started. This again, though frustrating, feels like a very deliberate design choice on behalf of the developers. There are obvious criticisms to be made. The complete lack of a narrative or a coherent story is something which will irk many gamers who are used to seeing a story unfold and reach a conclusion by means of a reward for their efforts. On the other hand this deliberate lack of narrative allows the gamer/viewer to find all kinds of hidden meanings and metaphors (whether you think this is a cheap excuse depends on your point of view). The other is the very short length and relative expense. For the price, many will feel that a game which can be finished in one sitting in no more than 3 hours or so is very expensive. Again, if this is art though and art is priceless, what's 1200 measly points? (also depending entirely on each individual). The answer to both of these criticisms is simply that this is what the developers wanted. Apparently they were warned, long before releasing the game and while it was in development, but they just stuck to their guns and made the game the exact way they wanted it. While this doesn't make Limbo exempt from criticism, it is very clearly the result of an uncompromised and solitary artistic vision, and for that alone it is admirable. Which brings me to the hardest part, which is rating this game. It really is easy to talk about Limbo but difficult to appraise it. I thought about not giving a score but since I payed for it, which makes it a product (how cruel), I will rate it as such and base my score purely on the gameplay and level of satisfaction I got from playing it. Limbo is a very strange ride. It will affect you in certain ways and it will stay with you, and leave you thinking. I would like to say that it should be experienced by everyone but the price of admission makes it difficult for me to do so. |
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Posted by bugsonglass Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:07:34
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robio (4m)
Think of 2D Prince of Persia