Limbo is artfully crafted, with clever puzzles and an oppressive but endlessly intriguing atmosphere.
+Engrossing visual and aural presentation
+Clever puzzles
+Scary atmosphere
+Surreal story
Cons:
-Short adventure in comparison to asking price
It takes special talent to make a game focused on sadness and oppression interesting. Particularly since the video game industry is in a particular drought in regards to anything that differs from the norm of being anything but a medium of fun. Limbo goes a step further, being a surreal, artistic and oddly beautiful adventure that focuses on living the game just as much as playing it. It lacks length, but instead retains a brisk and breathless pace. Once you delve into Limbo, it's unlikely you'll ever get back.
You play as a young boy with no name, stuck in a foreign world where almost everything is out to kill you. He ventures out to save his sister, who seems to have either disappeared or been kidnapped. We know nothing about the boy, but therein lies the story's genius. It leaves a lot to interpretation and luckily gives enough fodder for the mind. Not much will be said here to avoid spoilers, but the world of Limbo is multifaceted. Is the boy dead? Is he in a dream? What about his sister, is she gone to the other side? This is a concept well known in film and literature, but the only example this reviewer can remember of a game with a similar story structure is the hit indie title Braid. This is a styIe to be celebrated and it's utilized to great effect here.
The atmosphere of the game, however, is more created through visual and aural components. The world is mostly monochrome, with black substance and white backgrounds. On top of that, the entire game has a film-grain effect which adds a really nice touch. For instance, you can often see trees in the background but they at the same time seem very distant, as if enveloped in a transluscent fog. The contrasting colors work incredibly well, giving off a tangible vibe of dread, while the environment is strewn with often macabre visions of death and desolation.
Meanwhile, on the sound side, it's a lot more subtle. For most of the game, ambient music prevails, with various environmental sounds added into the mix. Not only is it perfectly in synch with the sadness and loneliness of Limbo, but it adds a slight sense of horror as well. A few times in the game, for example, a large spider will start to dog you persistently. At that point, the music stops and instead, a low droning sound starts. As time passes, the droning intensifies, growing into an oscillating rumbling that acts to just make you even more terrified of this spindly foe. It instills true fear, and at the end of the chase you feel as exhausted as the boy must feel himself.
At this point, Limbo might seem like a perilous prospect. A game that focuses on making you see sadness, dread and loneliness all in one go seems almost fanatic from the off-set. However, as mentioned before, this is handled so delicately that instead of just playing the game, you're experiencing it. Furthermore, to counterbalance the visual experience, you are of course required to partake directly in the world. Again, Limbo does things quite differently here.
It's neither a pure puzzle game nor a pure platformer. It's more an amalgam of both, with the focus on rather getting through the world in one piece rather than solving segmented areas of the game to get to the next checkpoint. The boy is far from being a superhero of a character. He's got a weak jump, a modest run and can only push the lightest blocks. Those are the tools you're given to work with and you must often think out of the box to solve his conundrums. At first, it's just simple orientation puzzles, revolving mostly around pushing and pulling various objects to create stepping stones to your destination. However, as time passes, things get trickier. You get to manipulate gravity, play with electricity, trick giant wasps and jump across chasms running from a recurring arachnid adversary. Since the game has a relatively short running time (which will be discussed separately a bit later), the game has the chance to continuously put you into new situations, new environs and new dangers.
You'll want to survive these dangers, since the boy has as many ways to die as there are obstacles. Seeing him being pierced by spikes, crushed by pillars or drown in opaque lakes is harrowing to say the least, and it's another styIistic implementation to make you care for the boy's adventure. He's risking his life every step of the way, taking the necessary risks to save his dear sister and get out of Limbo one way or another.
Unfortunately for the player, however, the trip to Limbo is short. Even those that take their time playing through all segments of the game should finish it in about 3 hours. Considering that, at least on the PlayStation 3, the asking price is around $15, that's paying $5 for the hour, which is quite jarring. However, as previously discussed, this also gives the game a relentlessly creative pace. The best course of action would be to simply wait for a sale and get it cheaper than otherwise; that way, you can delve into Limbo without having to empty much of your e-wallet.
If the question is whether or not you should get Limbo, however, the answer is simple: don't miss it. There's literally nothing like it, a study in both emotional and subtle storytelling. It's necessary to point out that the storyline itself is still quite skimp on the surface, so if you're looking for solid substance, you won't find any such thing here. Nonetheless, that's not what Limbo strives to be either way. It's its own entity, and should be proud to be so. PLAYDEAD (the game's developers) have done a great job here with their first game, and this reviewer for one eagerly anticipates what they will do next.
Final score: 9.0