The video game industry is becoming increasingly identical to the film industry, in more ways than one; when something successful comes out, studios will demand something similar in order to cash into the public's admiration for the aforementioned success; however, to find artistic and innovative films/games that take risks, play with the genre and give credence to either industry, there’s the independent, or “indie”, market, that has little to no promotion. And playing Limbo from Playdead help remind me of the necessity and artistic value of the independent market in particular and the video game industry in general.
Like most artsy downloadable games, there is a story and there isn’t; you are a child, more the silhouette of a child, (possibly) looking for your lost sister, though really this is just stated in the game’s description and no affirmation of your motivations are actually stated in game. Because the game is so surreal, it could be taking place anywhere; it could be a dream; a hallucination; a figment of an Oreo’s imagination. And the game progresses seamlessly, without loading screens or arriving by ‘choppa’, in a variety of environments; you start off in a forest/swamp-like area; then a industrial area full of gears; then a urban area where you jump over buildings, climb pipes, break a hotel neon sign. The narrative is very minimalist, as in, there is none at all, so it’s open to interpretation and analysis, with the game’s title offering the possibility of the game being set in purgatory or maybe unconsciousness; a land of strange beauties and horrific fears that we forget when we leave, a place where we can truly be ourselves or some shit like that.
So, if the plot is virtually nonexistent, what is your motivation for proceeding through the game? Well, very similar to your motivation for progressing forward in Shadow of the Colossus; you proceed to see what could happen next. In Shadow of the Colossus’ case, it was seeing what the next 'Colossus' could be, and in Limbo’s case, it is seeing what the next hauntingly beautiful level could be conjured from the manic-depressive’s head that is Limbo’s designer. In addition, the sadistic motivation to see how bloody and needlessly the level and its traps will kill you is present as you go through the levels, although that could have been just me.
The gameplay is quite reminiscent of the platforming sections in LittleBigPlanet; you jump around areas, with the height of the jump depending on the pressure placed on the “jump” button; and one controller button that pushes or pulls boxes, pushes or pulls levers and turns switches on or off. But Limbo is more of a mirror-universe version of LittleBigPlanet in that the bright, colourful, cheerful optimistic world is replaced with a stark, pessimistic and monochromatic world, where the almost non-threatening enemies who had clearly defined weak points are replaced with traps that could be anywhere and anything; a simple, innocent patch of grass could be a rusty, malicious bear trap, something that you will only find out after triggering the trap, making Limbo a game of trial-and-error..
And that note leads me to mention Limbo’s art style, which is so beautifully depressing and dark, you would consider every single Nickelback song too optimistic. The game is portrayed through a dark, monochromatic style which helps strengthen the oppressive feel the game is trying to build, making you abandon all hope, feel that you are nothing in this universe and you mean nothing; you don‘t evoke fear, pride, passion or heroism, you are nothing. Every solid object is displayed as a simplistic silhouette, which aids to the game’s surreal nature and can even make things scarier. There is this one part of the game where you encounter a fucking huge spider, yet I call it a spider when it is more like a child’s drawing with a round body and spindly square legs with hardly any discerning features (and I‘m pretty sure it had less than eight legs), but this is how the subconscious of a arachnophobe like me would view most spiders; large, scary multi-legged creature that wants to eat me and it doesn‘t need to be as detailed. And, yes, this game didn’t help my crippling arachnophobia.
A complaint I’ve heard from some people is that the game features no music, but those people must be a little bit tone deaf, because there is a soundtrack composed of minimalist acoustical and ambient sounds that mix subtlety within the sound effects of the game. There’s one part of pure musical brilliance where the music combines into a masterpiece of tragicomedy; the scene takes place in an area near a pool of water were bodies are floating face down in the water, with flies buzzing around the corpses and you have to use them as floating platforms to safety, then you must use one of the bodies to trigger a trap, it’s during this that the music rises to an immoral crescendo, making you ponder on whether morals should come before survival, then the second the trap (which is a touch sensitive pad below a massive block of stone) drops on the dead body, the music completely stops dead. It was superbly timed, given you both a chuckle and pause for thought at what act you committed; a pure example of black comedy.
Limbo, however, is quite a short game, where you could play the whole game within five hours, but is it really a complaint to say that a game left me wanting more? Sure, you shouldn’t engorged yourself in something luxurious or else it will become mundane and bland, and it would have been possible that Limbo could have just dragged on at the end and that would have ruined the experience. There also may be not much replayability to some players, but the minute I finished the game, I wanted to visit this strange, ethereal world and experience the wonders and horrors of it again. And, unfortunately, the game’s length and replayability leads me to the game’s price, in which some will see the price tag of £10 a little much for a short, one-time playable game. However, I felt the price was irrelevant to the necessity of Limbo to the gaming world; this is a game the game industry needs and gamers should have, to prove to the nay-sayers the possibility of video games as an art form; this is a game to counterbalance the legion of Halo-clones and sandbox games; to show that the industry can be innovative and not rely on other franchises and games to copy from; that video games aren’t just about violence, guns and regenerative health, any genre can be, please excuse my Disney moment here, touched in the imaginative world of video games.
Limbo is a fantastically depressive and beautiful game that should be in any gamers’ ownership. It’s gameplay may be simple and nothing new and the price is steep for its length, but its fantastic presentation and addition to the video game industry defend it from these nitpicks. Get it and play this game, just make sure you have the antidepressants at the ready when you finish and stay away from any noose-shaped ropes.
I’m Random Internet Critic and I criticise it because I’m first in the Irish Sea, another message I can’t read.
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