Can't quite put my finger on why I never got round to purchasing Limbo on Xbox Live Arcade, perhaps the 1200 point price tag made me a bit apprehensive, expense has an uncanny knack for overriding potential quality after all. Regardless, I recently downloaded it for PC, and I find it to be one the finest games of all time.
Limbo is about a little boy taking a very dark journey, both literally and metaphorically, a journey in which a gruesome death awaits around every corner (although, this being a 2D side scroller, we never get to see those corners). During the course of his tale, he will be killed over and over again, in ways that would make Rasputin's death look like a walk in the park, and the player is complicit in every single one of these untimely demises. Whether it be drowning, evisceration, impalement or accidental squashing, every one of those deaths carries with it a genuine sense of failure, and many of them, in a wicked twist, are necessary in order to progress. The worst parts are when the solution to a puzzle requires starting from scratch, thereby forcing you to kill the boy on purpose. A little macabre perhaps, but inspired.
Then there's the other children, playful little scamps that think nothing of setting deadly traps for our hero, there sudden appearance adds little respite. A particularly creepy moment sees a group of them chase after the boy with poisonous blow darts, it's like Lord Of The Flies, only instead of knowing social commentary there's an almost unbearable sense of dread.
The story of Limbo is predictably slight, the role of those murderous little children is never explained, the goal of the protagonist is never made apparent, only vaguely hinted at. It's wise for anyone willing to play this game (that should be everyone) to avoid reading any sort of synopsis, because the stories elusiveness is part of the games overall theme; the fear of the unknown.
It's this fear that creates an almost palpable sense of impending doom. Death is always approaching the boy and, try as you might, there is absolutely nothing you can do about. The shadowy world of Limbo, never seems like anything you can escape from, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, snatched glimpses of the moonlit backdrop only seem to suggest a vast labyrinth of similar doom-laden pathways.
Limbo really is one of those games that only comes along maybe once a decade, it would be a criminally hidden gem if it weren't for the wonderful pioneer that is Xbox Live Arcade, which has brought it to the attention of the shooter-saturated masses.
Limbo is a game in which a little boy wanders through the a shadowy world unknown terrors, dying hundreds of times as he goes, and it's a game that absolutely, positively must be experienced.
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