#limbo review

[mindsetmoviereviews]

[thefilmagazine]

Limbo (2020) BFI LFF Review - Bittersweet Refugee Drama is a Sophisticated Vision

Ben Sharrock creates a bittersweet tale of those in need of a place to call home in 2020 refugee drama 'Limbo'. Leoni Horton reviews this lovingly photographed fish-out-of-water film.

Read here.

[phoenixmaiden-gaming]

Limbo Review

I really enjoyed this one. It plays with just shapes and shadows with no defining features at all, but it’s what makes it so creepy. The fact that you can’t see anything really makes you pay more attention so you can see everything that is coming. Or not, there were some parts I couldn’t see and had to listen for, so I was on my edge of my seat the entire time. It made my heart race when I saw a pair of eyes or dark creature ahead.

The game was relatively straightforward with no complicated plot. And it was kind of scary with things jumping out at you or hearing things you can’t see. Loved it.

Starts: ★★★★★

[teaandgames]

Revisiting - LIMBO (2010)

My abiding memory of LIMBO occurs near the beginning. In the midst of a dark and overgrown forest, full of bear traps (but no bears), I run past a tree that seems to bearing one of the traps as its fruit. Ignoring that, thinking that it’s likely to fall on my head, I instead run towards another tree. As I grow near, it appears to sprout legs that unfurl and hover over me. It takes me only a second to realise that it’s a giant spider and its legs are poised to strike. As it slams down on the earth, there’s a metallic clunk behind me. The bear trap has fallen to the ground. All at once, I know what I have to do and the realisation conjures a spark of enjoyment at solving it tempered by a drop of revulsion.

Sure enough, I have to slide the bear trap into the position so the spider slams down upon it, biting its legs off. I have to do this three times before it concedes. The third time, I wasn’t quick enough and got speared through the head. But this scene is so stuck in my mind because it represents pretty much everything in LIMBO. First, we’re a little kid. Little kids should not have to jump over bear traps. Secondly, we’re in a nightmare world. I even like spiders, but I would not want to meet this one. And thirdly, the kid is going to lose his innocence. After biting off its legs, we later hit the spider with a boulder before pushing its mangled body into spikes. LIMBO straight away sets itself up as a frequently brutal art piece, with all of the strengths and weaknesses that comes with it.

First off, let’s talk about the artwork itself. Its colour scheme is quite striking, if only because of how different it looks compared to most other games. It’s monochromatic art style and simplistic use of shape gives it a lot of character. The protagonist especially has a very simple design, which I love. His features, particularly his head, are exaggerated giving him a cartoony, childish look. Yet this is contrasted against things like that spider and the other (murderous) humans he runs into, which look somewhat more normally proportioned. This colour scheme goes a long way to setting the atmosphere, which is horror-esque on first playing through it. The darker scheme goes a long way to highlighting the more depressing moments in LIMBO, giving the whole thing a downtrodden feel, yet the rays of sunlight that break through feel all the brighter because of it.

It’s paired with some good sound design too, which is appropriately minimalist. I’m always drawn back to the description of INSIDE’s score, where the composer talks about using a real human skull to achieve some of its more chilling notes. That could equally apply to LIMBO, which eschews music in all but the most important of moments. What we’re left with is ambient noise, the creaks of the forest and clangs of the machinery in the industrial moment. There was one key moment where you cause it to break out in rain and the pitter-patter of the rain made me instinctively get the kid under the nearest cover. These sounds seem to carve out this unfamiliar world in a way and are frequently the sound of an impending death. Together with the art style, it creates moments in LIMBO that are memorable, almost in spite of the gameplay. Clambering over a broken hotel sign, as it sparks and briefly lights up, comes to mind.

But together with this comes the brutal gameplay. I’m in two minds over the actual content of the gameplay, but one thing LIMBO is famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) for is how often it will kill you. Bear traps are its first obstacle, which start off obvious but quickly become more cunning. I jumped onto a rope without thinking, and without realising that there was a bear trap at the top of it, and only realised my mistake when the kid received a metallic kiss. By the end of the game, the kid had been crushed, shot, drowned, sawn into pieces and fried. Way more than any kid should have to deal with, but that’s kind of the point. You’re a tiny, innocent being thrust into a world that wants nothing more than to see your head on a platter. And due to the guiding of the gameplay, we start to see how it affects him. At one point, you have to grab onto a giant fly and sail up to a higher platform. Instead of letting go when he could have, he elects to tear off the fly’s leg instead. Brutal.

My ambivalence comes over the puzzle aspect of the game. A lot of them, like the spider and the fly (which is a decent metaphor for the kids changing position, by the way) are there mainly as a vehicle for the messages behind them all. These ones generally form the high points of LIMBO. Climbing over that broken hotel sign, for instance. Or the later levels where the world becomes a mess of gears and machinery, that go some way to questioning what the world really is. These are good but it’s where the case of LIMBO being an art piece starts becoming an issue. The puzzles, from a purely gameplay standpoint, are extremely simple. Most are basic timing and jumping puzzles. The problem with an art piece, unless it’s deliberately experimental, is that it’s generally best not to distract the viewer. You want them to experience the piece as a whole, so it must be focused down. That leads to a somewhat boring puzzle design.

It does bring in some good ideas, like when the whole world starts rotating, causing you to think upside-down but, again as in INSIDE, these ideas feel underused. Set pieces rather than actual puzzles. LIMBO’s puzzles are often solved in the first minute, with the lengthy bit being actually jumping through everything. But it also has a share of irritating ideas too. The brain maggots (a name of my own creation and I imagine you have a good idea of what they are), while good as a talking point, often produce the duller sections. When one burrows into your head, you’re locked into walking in a set direction, only changing when you encounter direct sunlight. I found it somewhat annoying to have control wrestled away from me only to be put through, what is essentially, a basic obstacle course. The brain maggots may represent the darker sides of the world controlling a small child but in real life, I want to do the walking.

LIMBO does go some way to redeeming itself in its gameplay design, however. The kid controls remarkably fluidly. While it’s not as responsive as something like Super Meat Boy, it also has a far slower and more relaxed pace. It has nice animation work too, with the kid stumbling and clinging on for dear life. It’s also generous with its checkpoints, giving you one before each puzzle so you rarely waste time. For a game that features death so heavily, this is the best possible choice. We need to get back into it as soon as possible. However, the arty side of it bites again when it comes to length. The actual ending itself is well done, leaving everything but the central goal as a big question mark, but it comes far too soon. On my latest playthrough, I clocked about two hours. I feel it skips between locations a bit too quickly, without really letting the world sink its teeth into us.

Perhaps it should have played to the horror aspect a touch more, without slipping into the genre. The opening section sets it up well, with a giant scary forest full of giant scary things, but it begins to slip from place to place. As such, the kid’s journey feels like it’s over in five minutes. A mere jaunt, rather than an unnerving epic. But as I write this, I realise I’ve been going about LIMBO the wrong way. LIMBO is designed to tax you, not while you’re going through the puzzles but after you’ve finished them. When you slip through a location and think back to all the little bits of the set and try to slot them in. That hotel arrow that fell down and was left pointing directly up into a bright light? I can fit that in. It’s where the strength of the ‘art piece’ discussion comes in. LIMBO may not have stretched my puzzle muscles but it’s stuck in my head far longer than any other game I’ve played recently.

LIMBO strikes me more of an experience rather than any serious puzzle game. And it’s definitely one that I would recommend playing. Like INSIDE, it offers no answers but instead raises more questions. It is quite a pretentious game because of it and some people will get less out of it than others, but I feel it is a game worth playing through. It pushes for unashamed brutality to tell a story about a boy looking for his sister, in a nightmarish world that we’re not even sure is real. It ends abruptly, and there are a few hiccups along the way, but as nightmare forests full of giant spiders go, LIMBO’s is definitely up there. Pros -Great art style -Good sound design -Dripping in symbolism -Almost horror-like in its atmosphere Cons -Simplistic puzzle design -Very short -Quite a lot of ideas are unused or otherwise frustrating (brain maggots) LIMBO Developer: Playdead Release Date: 21st July 2010 Play it on: Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, iOS, Android, Wii U Played on: Windows Check out the playthrough!

[calebjross]

Welcome to The One Thing, a video game review series that does something a bit different. Rather than try to touch on all the features that make a game great, I attempt to distill a game down to a single element that I believe is integral to the experience of the game. This may not be the only thing that makes a game great, but if someone asked me to tell them why Limbo works, I’d start with The One Thing.

The one thing is The grayscale color palette.

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[litecaststudios-blog]

Limbo is one of those games that keeps you wondering, what happens next. Unlike many other puzzle games this game is simply disturbing. 

While its whimsical main character may seem to charm you. Possibly due to the fact that A) its a little boy and B) Its a fucking kid. You don't expect to see him often killing other children, or dying in very violent ways.

This game is rather simple. And what makes it draw away from being too much of a cliche, is the fact that its just too simple.

However do not get me wrong. Just because it is a simple game, does not stray away from its rather dark and heavy storyline. 

As you start out, the boy ends up in a world we come to know as Limbo. As you begin your sidescrolling adventure, you automatically pick up on the controls. Arrow keys to jump and navigate, and control to grab. These keys are practically all you need to know, which make the game a much more addicting game because you don't have to worry about button combos, and confusing controls. 

Going back to the plot, as you continue on, you begin to pick up some of the obstacles, giant monsters, and even some evil children. Yea, I'm talking about that Children of the Corn, Im'a bite your fucking head off type shit. And while the game seems challenging at times, it does seem to get easy as you get used to bear traps, and ledges. The game still manages to pick up more challenging courses, such as water obstacles, and even taking advantage of gerbils. or whatever you call em. 

The game has a very ambient soundtrack, to play with the highly mysterious atmosphere that is Limbo. And essentially although you know you are playing a sidescrolling puzzle game, you can't help but to feel like your playing slender, or some other horror game. The game doesn't have any popups, but definitely getting chased by a giant spider reminds me of running away from the Shadow Monsters in Amnesia the Dark Descent. 

This game is jam packed with  interesting puzzles, an unraveling storyline, plenty of objects that you can use to progress through the game with, and more retries than you think. It is sure to keep you busy for a few hours. A few hours because the game practically ends as quickly as you begin. It actually is not that long of a game, but it is just enough for you to be satisfied with the gameplay. 

While I admit I probably was a little more of a baby than I thought with this game, the creep level, frustration level, and  level of content in the game made it worth the money, considering the fact that many indie puzzle games seem extremely repetitive. This game brought many fresh ideas I had never seen in any other game, and never had I needed to apply this much logic to complete a game before. 

This game is a sure 4 out of 5. 

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