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dkirschner's Limbo (PC)
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| [April 30, 2012 01:15:02 PM]
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This was an awesome game.
It throws you in a black forest with no instructions and no fanfare. You just have to explore and figure out what's going on. So when I started, I was like '...controls?' Then I was like, well it's a platformer, so let's try the arrows. Success. I did have to look up (it has a menu -- take THAT immersion!) how to interact with objects (CTRL) because I almost got mad at the beginning of the game because I couldn't figure out what to do because I didn't look for anything to drag because there had been no instructions for a drag button so I didn't even know I could drag. It made me think about what I take for granted when picking up a game, and also, unfortunately, how reliant I am on the game telling me what does what in the beginning. Limbo just throws you to the wolves, though thankfully these wolves only respond to one button and not 10.
Once I didn't get mad and didn't feel like a failure after not knowing what to do within 2 minutes of beginning, I took in the background and the wonderful music and sounds. The picture fades around the edges and focuses near your character. The background also gets very hazy. The world is dreamlike, and I think it's a dream that the character is stuck in. By dreamlike, I mean nightmarish. The woods/factory/waterworks/air ducts are just death traps. I died probably 100 times, but the dying never interrupted anything. You respawn within 15 gameplay seconds of where you died like every time. Death isn't a punishment. It's a learning experience. Oftentimes, I'd just die because I didn't know what was coming. Then I'd know what was there and I wouldn't die next time. Like, sliding down a hill into a pit of spikes, but while sliding down I see a good spot to jump fly past. Ah, next time! And there really are a lot of ways to die -- spikes, impaled from every angle, impaled by spider leg, crushed by boulder/box/falling object, fall to your death, drown, smashed by blocks, shredded by buzzsaw...I very much enjoyed dying.
The game's audio really works wonders to set the atmosphere alongside the visuals too. I was playing at first with headphones on and I could hear rain drops, flies buzzing, ambient forest sounds, etc. Very well done. I moved later to my TV, controller, and speakers, and while the game looked awesome on the big screen and felt better with a controller instead of a keyboard, the speakers didn't allow the same detail to reach my ears as headphones do. So I put the headphones back on but kept the TV and controller setup.
I enjoyed the beginning of the game more than the end. The beginning has more humanoids, and the humanoids are disconcerting. They creeped me out and always were laying traps or shooting blow darts at me. Or there were corpses, and that big spider in the beginning. The second half of the game turned into more of a platformer with gravity mechanics, which while cool, took a lot of the intrigue out of it. I guess I enjoyed figuring out how all the mechanics worked, the boxes, the rising water in that level, the cogs in those levels...and by the end I'd seen them all, and gravity mechanics are pretty handily used to death these days. I felt that the last handful of chapters were the weakest. It was also completely anti-climactic. There's no explicit story. You just think whatever you think is going on. But still, in the beginning/middle there is a giant spider and a mosquito character and other humanoids. But the middle/end there is nothing. No bosses. No mystery. No nothing.
Totally worth the few hours it'll take to play and the few bucks it'll cost to buy. More 2-D games should be unique and innovative like this one.
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dkirschner's Limbo (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Monday 30 April, 2012
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 1 May, 2012 |
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