Limbo | a Review
originally posted on 19/08/2020;
Hello everyone, I am the black and white, mostly white, G.E.M.Simov, a dead, but not dead, dude, and I’ve come to bring the word of Limbo.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
Limbo is a 2D platformer with puzzles. It could also be described as a side-scroller. The game is relatively short, but makes up for it with substance. The whole premise is that the player starts at a certain point and then makes their way to the left (of the screen) or to the right (of the player facing the screen).
Even though it is a platformer, Limbo is more focused on presenting puzzles to the player, that require inventive solutions utilizing what is thrown around in the environment, although that does not mean that there are also some interesting, and even intense, platforming sessions.
As is well known, by now, hopefully, by readers of my reviews, movement is the most important thing in any game. For a platformer, it is one of the only things in the game. As a result of that, the movement in any platformer should be very well implemented, and should feel fluent, pleasant and, most importantly, should be very responsive.
The movement in Limbo is something that fits in closer to the better section of the spectrum, which goes from bad movement to good movement. It is not as smooth as, for example, Helltaker, but it is not as wooden and stiff as some other games I’ve been forced, by my own self, to play through.
The movement is passable. That is what I can say about it, and that is what it is. The movement of the character feels a tad slower than what I would normally expect for a character in such an environment to be able to achieve, velocity-wise, and it feels as if there is a very tiny bit of input lag, between a fifth and a tenth of a second, where the action does not immediately begin, once the button corresponding to it is pressed.
That could be owed up to the fact that the game has made the attempt to simulate realistic movement in a very unrealistic setting, meaning that the character does not immediately go into a full run, and instead needs time to wind up, much like your grandma when she starts getting up from her seat. This is not inherently bad, although the animation is hard to see, due to the direction in which the artstyle has gone, and thus it feels as if the character is simply standing there, instead of doing anything.
Even with those issues, as mentioned, the movement in Limbo is passable. That means it is not bad enough to warrant a penalty in score. What matters, when it comes to a puzzle-platformer, such as Limbo, are the quality of the puzzles, the intensity of the platforming sections, and the difficulty of both.
Limbo seems to be treading the finest of lines, and that is the line of the difficulty curve. I have not seen many other games execute a difficulty curve as perfectly as Limbo - it starts off easy, but not easy enough, to the point where it is impossible to fail. It is possible to fail, but it is so easy that any person with common sense would notice the perils and avoid them. Beetlejuice, good old Lester Green, would, alas, probably fail.
The difficulty ramps up, but it is never too hard to figure out how to solve the puzzle. The solution comes first - the player sees, and then the player knows what they need to do to progress, but the issue is in how to do it. These practical exercises in problem solving are refreshing, compared to the “puzzles” in adventure games which simply boggle the mind and weight down heavily upon one’s conscience for years to come, after their initial completion.
The same can be said about the platforming sections of Limbo. Initially, the biggest feats of consecutive parkour executions are simple jumps over small holes with spikes inside them, easy beyond reason, but then the player needs to jump over rolling tires, which are on fire, then the player ends up having to jump from varying in scale of deadliness platforms which start moving as the player lands upon them. And, again, it is never too difficult.
Limbo manages to bring, to the table, a great number of wonderful puzzles and intensely thrilling, yet unobtrusive, challenges in the form of platforming segments, in such a wonderful way it would simply be a crime, and I’ve committed those, to not give it the full rating on the Gameplay scale. 3/3
Presentation
As mentioned previously, Limbo is a 2D sidescroller. 2D sidescrollers are known for having cute, drawn art that features small, bubbly characters that bring joy to behold. Limbo, on the other hand, features drawn characters that are pitch black. The whole game is black and white, and yet many, many things are clear and pop, even though they are black on a grey background.
Somehow, the visual fidelity of Limbo is better than games made six, eight years later, with whole teams working on the graphics of said games. In Limbo, everything that the player needs to see, and needs to know of, is plainly visible, magically outlined by black lines, which do not appear to, at all, pop out, as the objects themselves are black.
Limbo is simple, in its presentation, and that simplicity allows for its hauntingly beautiful images to weasel their way onto posters and reach out for the player’s wallet. The art, even if simple, even if exclusively black, white, and shades of grey, is amazing. It does look better than many games of the current console generation, and even some PC juggernauts, although those are simply well ported console games (alas).
Then we come to a little bit of a weak point. Limbo is quiet. There is barely any music. The sound effects are somewhat wrong, as if they shouldn’t be there. The ambience is dreadful, in the sense that it drowns the player in the sound of solitude, of interpretative misery. Even if the game does not have much in the sound department, it is made on purpose. Limbo, as many people may know, is the space between life and death. And it is fitting that Limbo would be quiet, muted, an imperfect reflection of the world of the living, of life.
The presentation is great - it’s stellar, no UI at all, nothing to cover up the ghostly spectacle that unveils itself before the player. 3/3
Story
Now, one would think to themselves that Limbo, having the best score that could be had in both Presentation and Gameplay, would also have a stellar story, right?
Right?
Well, not quite. Limbo has no story. None, whatsoever. The player simply starts in spot A and waddles on through many places to reach spot B. There is nothing, no text, no voices, very few indications. There are enemies, but more than half of them have unknown motives. Why do these fellows want the player character dead? How could the player know? There are other corpses around, but they’re not actually eaten, they just hang off of trees.
Means there’s really no reason to want to kill the player character, but they try to nonetheless. Where is the player character? Well, there’s a place that has a sign for a hotel on it. There’s a place that looks like a factory. There’s a place that seems to be a forest. Nothing concrete - it’s so lacking that I did not even know if the player character wasn’t just some child that was lost in the woods.
Is the player character dead? Is the player character alive? What is going on? Why did I see a girl over there? Am I horny? Is this window breaking the window of a vehicle? Is it the fabric of reality, presented as a window, that breaks as everything loops back around on itself?
Limbo does that. It makes the player ask questions, while delivering no answers. I believe I can see the intention behind this, the goal of making the player feel as if they, themselves, are in this Limbo, which would support the presentation of the game’s attempts at making the player feel sad and lonely, but I do not think that is good enough for a story. There is something - I asked a lot of questions, I started pondering - but it is not enough. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Limbo, alas, does NOT get the legendary point. That is, in part, due to the fact that other than the visuals of the game, I really don’t find anything else about it to be supremely memorable, or touching. The Gameplay, as stated, is good - but it is not something I’d want to experience over and over again, due to the issue with the input lag.
The story is absolutely lacking. There is no story that I could perceive, other than the tale of some boy going places. It’s not anything that I find myself too drawn to. 0/1
Conclusion
7/10. Limbo is a good game. It’s such a good game that even a person who normally does not play video games could enjoy it - owed up to its simplicity and sublime difficulty curve. It’s a game I would recommend to literally everybody - it is such a nice experience to have, I would not want you to miss out on it, much like America would not want me to miss out on freedom.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display. It could have been a bit bigger, a bit deeper, bit it is what it is - a nice little thing.