Limbo is a game that sounds simple and familiar in premise, go from left to right, jump to avoid obstacles, solve puzzles to advance to the next area, and eventually find the princess, or in this case your sister. This is where the similarities to other puzzle/platformer games stop. The first thing you’ll notice once you start playing is the unique art style. There is no color in the world of Limbo only black, white, and various shades of gray in between. The visual style makes everything in this game, from the subtle rays of sunlight peering through the trees to the crisp edges of just about everything, look absolutely beautiful.
That’s not to say this game is a beautiful romp through happy-fun and sunshine land. When you die (and you will…often) your character does not just fall down or disappear into a puff of smoke. You will get brutally smashed, impaled, poison darted, drowned, and sliced into little pieces. Also adding to the “OH MY GOD” factor is that you character is only a child. Even though all these terrible things happen to the little Limbo boy, your character is only a silhouette, so the game never gets too explicit.
Although you will die a lot, none of the deaths feel cheap. There is also generous checkpointing; every time you die you will restart with plenty of time to avoid what killed you last. Playing this game at a slow and steady pace instead of running as fast as you can will give you the benefit of living a longer life. Just about every time you die, it is because you either weren’t paying enough attention and didn’t see something or because you didn’t time a jump correctly. The controls are what platformer games aspire to achieve. They feel solid, reliable, measured, and precise. Every time you miss a jump, it’s your own fault. The controls are simple as well, you have your jump button and you have you “action” button. The action button is where the puzzle aspect comes into play, as you will often need to maneuver objects like crates, switches, and leavers to proceed to the next area. Some of the puzzles can be downright frustrating, yet the answers are never hidden and are never too far out there. The solution is always right there in front of you, everything you need is on the screen, all you have to do is figure how they interact with each other.
One of the problems of the platforming genre is repetition. Doing the same jumps and moving the same boxes over and ever gets tiring and boring after a while. This is not the case with Limbo. The gameplay is constantly adding exciting new variables into the mix, be it worms that attach to your skull and force you to walk in a certain direction until you hit sunlight, switches that change gravity, running from enemies, riding a mine cart into a dark cave, switches that effect magnetism, swinging from ropes, avoiding machinegun turrets, and just barely making that jump and seeing Limbo boy pull himself up to a ledge. The feeling you get when you pull off some of these jumps and narrowly escape certain death (especially if you do it on your first try without dying) is something that cannot be told, you simply have to experience this yourself.
The only criticism someone may argue about this game is the length. To be blunt, it’s kinda short, the first playthrough only lasting 4 hours or so, and any subsequent playthrough was about half that time. The game could easily take much longer if you get stuck on some puzzles though. Going after the hidden golden eggs adds some decent replayability as well as some achievement points to boot. However complaining that Limbo is only a few hours long is like complaining that you got to go into outer space and visit the moon, but it was only for a day. Limbo is a one of a kind experience that you will remember for years to come and I cannot recommend this game highly enough.
I would also like to pat myself on the back for not mentioning Braid in this review……. Crap.