{"id":290,"date":"2015-05-02T06:28:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T04:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=290"},"modified":"2015-05-02T06:28:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-02T04:28:47","slug":"limbo-review-stuck-between-heaven-and-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/limbo-review-stuck-between-heaven-and-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Limbo Review: Stuck Between Heaven And Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word limbo conjures up very specific things in my mind. I was, at one point, Catholic and as a Catholic youngster, I ended up going to catechism. Catechism is a kind of class where they teach you about the Church, Jesus and the Saints. One of the topics we learned about [though it\u2019s not totally official Church canon] is the theory of limbo.<\/p>\n

To briefly summarize: limbo is a place between Heaven and Hell and you go there when, for example, you can\u2019t get baptised at birth.<\/p>\n

Limbo is understood to be featureless \u2013 an endless black plain that stretches on forever in all directions \u2013 a place where you would neither feel the warmth of Hell or the peace of Heaven. You would effectively remain in this state until Jesus freed you.<\/p>\n

And this, more-or-less is exactly what you get when you boot up Limbo. Everything is black and white with no colour to speak of. The music is foreboding \u2013 a generalized hum of minor keys with occasional bursts of machinery throughout.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Limbo is very effective at conveying it\u2019s tone, which is writ large across the three or so hours you might be playing it. It starts off fairly unassuming \u2013 essentially seeming like a very dark Mario game, but by the end of the first half, your protagonist has suffered many brutal deaths at the hands of either other people trapped in Limbo, like he is, or various machines and other naturally occurring obstacles that litter the landscape.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>
I’m on a boat!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I mentioned Mario, and, really, Limbo\u2019s ancestry can be traced right back to that game. Yes, you have to jump, no, it\u2019s not \u2013 generally \u2013 the sort of frantic jumping a Mario game might force upon you. See, in the world of Limbo, there are obstacles \u2013 perhaps you need to get past a lake that\u2019s too wide for you to jump, but there\u2019s a boat that you can ride \u2013 in order for you to get into that boat, you might have to drag it a little \u2013 to the water\u2019s edge \u2013 and then hop in and go for a ride.<\/p>\n

Limbo\u2019s puzzles start off fairly simple \u2013 do x to get to spot y, but by the end of the game, they\u2019re quite intricate and involve a great amount of observation. Ordinarily, that\u2019s all you need: careful study of the situation that you\u2019re in to figure out what you need to do, but on occasion, you are somewhat reliant on dumb luck to get you through the section you\u2019re currently in. [One particular puzzle involving gravity is \/very\/ much a case of this: it\u2019s not totally obvious what you need to do until you\u2019ve given it a bit of thought.]<\/p>\n

\"Traps<\/a>
That doesn’t look safe at all.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This mirrors the feel of the game \u2013 as you travel along the developers have laid out for you, you will find that the tension ratchets up by a notch with each new area you explore. Music \u2013 largely absent from the beginning of the game \u2013 begins working it\u2019s way into the background noises, the tone \u2013 if at all possible \u2013 becomes darker, more mechanical, less natural. And the traps that are strewn about the landscape start becoming ever more fiendish.<\/p>\n

To this end, Limbo is a fantastic game \u2013 In 2012, when I first encountered it, it was game of the year for me, mostly because it\u2019s atmosphere, but also just because of the very minimalist story it is trying to tell. Though, with this game, much like with the doctrine of Limbo, there are no \u201ctrue answers.\u201d Everything is speculation. Why is there a Hotel sign in the middle of nowhere just littering the landscape? Who are the other children that are so hell-bent on killing you? Why is there a giant spider running after you? [And just so you\u2019re aware: I\u2019m not spoiling anything; these are questions you might be asking yourself after looking at the back of the box.]<\/p>\n

Limbo is short, but very visceral. While you\u2019re playing it, you\u2019re right there, in that moment, trying to solve that puzzle along with the protagonist. When you\u2019re not playing it, you\u2019re probably thinking about it, trying to consider the way through the current puzzle you\u2019re having trouble with \u2013 and even after the game\u2019s done, it\u2019ll stay with you for a long time \u2013 even if you don\u2019t remember the exact puzzle sequences, you will always remember quite specific moments in the game, because they are presented in a way that makes them memorable. This, in 2012, was what made me make the claim to friends that it was game of the year. You had to play it, man! It was awesome!<\/p>\n

If Limbo has one problem, it is the controls. Naturally, because this is a puzzle-platformer, this is a bit of a bugbear, but hear me out: For a lot of the game, you can get by with the protagonist having a slightly floaty jump \u2013 he doesn\u2019t always respond in exactly the way you\u2019re going to want him to when you\u2019re doing precision jumping \u2013 but in the early sections of the game, this is OK. Many of the puzzles have just<\/em> the right amount of slack built into them that it\u2019s not a big deal, but the further along you go, the more this becomes problematic.<\/p>\n

\"Not<\/a>
Maybe we can be friends. If I approach \/very\/ slowly?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are sequences where you have to string a very specific number of jumps together at a very specific moment, and when the protagonist\u2019s response time is a little left-of-centre, it means sometimes having to retrace your footsteps over and over and over again until you get the timing right. Fortunately, Limbo is fairly generous with save points. While there is only one save file, often, if you die, the game doesn\u2019t expect you to do too<\/em> much work to get back to where you were. [Occasionally, of course, these spots are a little weird and you\u2019ll have to do a bit more work, but it\u2019s never particularly onerous.]<\/p>\n

So, can I recommend it? Oh yes, indeed, even with the slightly floaty controls, Limbo is the kind of game that will give you a whole lot of food for thought as you\u2019re playing it, and years after, I\u2019m still not sure entirely what it was that I saw at the end. Limbo is gift that way: while it is quite grisly, it is also very thought provoking \u2013 and this is something I wish more games did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word limbo conjures up very specific things in my mind. I was, at one point, Catholic and as a Catholic youngster, I ended up going to catechism. Catechism is a kind of class where they teach you about the Church, Jesus and the Saints. One of the topics we<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[3,35,20,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}