LIMBO - game review - ☆☆☆☆☆

          I enjoy puzzles.  I get a wonderful micro-instant brain fizz when, after extensive trial and error (or in the case of this game—trial, death, and re-spawn) 'I can't figure this one out' crystallizes, the solution clicks in my gulliver, and...'oh yea! Gotcha.'

          If Edward Gorey designed a side-scroller like The Humans, it would be Limbo; a game with good value for average invested entertainment time ($15 for ≈15 hours).  A few of its 39 chapters are time-sensitive, which seem more a test of hand-eye coordination than mental dexterity; others rely on pure deduction (path + tools = looks impossible but it's not); a few are sequence oriented; many are a combination of all of the above.  Add the occasional anti-gravity device, electro-magnet, huge insect, and...well...you get a great puzzle game.

2 comments:

Davecat said...

I bought Limbo for my XBOLLOX; from the outset, I loved the visuals (cos they align almost perfectly with my Weimar-era Germany film colour scheme), and find the premise fascinating (almost everything can and probably will kill you at any time). However, I find the game so frustrating at times that I haven't played it all that often, cos invariably I have to scour YouTube for an appropriate walkthrough, otherwise it's 'O look, he's drowned in three feet of water again.'

I'm glad I have the game, but it's not something I get completely excited when I think about firing it up. And don't even ask me about achievements...

veach glines said...

Ahh ha. I see...*I say while, not trying all too hard to stifle the sound-and-feeling of superiority coursing*... I died 60-100 times on each of the "have to push X at this exact micro-second ones" (e.g. the second spider one, the saw-mill, the first 'bend-gravity mid-jump by touching the arrow sign' one, etc).

Each time I failed, I got a little more confident; NOW I knew what was expected to get through the chapter (I repeated for what felt like the zillionth time)

I never looked up a walk-thru. Nor have I covertly unwrapped Santa's presents from under the tree, peeked and re-wrapped; ummm...I really can only eat one Lay's potato chip; and... I wouldn't do very much more than fifty cents worth of anything for a Klondike Bar.

But that's just me.