Limbo

I'd seen Limbo in the XBOX Live arcade shop for a while.  It never really caught my attention.  Julia Hardy of Gameface fame brought it to my attention through one of her YouTube editorials.  If you heard the name Limbo - you'd be forgiven for thinking it was an up and coming Kinnect Title which involved leaning backwards and trying to dance under a horizontal pole... In fact - I may have just given away a good idea for a popular title for someone to develop!
 
What Limbo IS, isn't really clear.  If you search the internet you can find theories, but the developers have made no official statement and there is no narrative in the game.  At the start, the boy wakes up, and you guide him to the right through a creepy forest, avoiding traps and giant spiders... The tagline to the game says something about looking for your sister, but for most of the game that seems fairly irrelevant, the object is more or less - move right, avoid being killed.
 
The simple task of avoiding being killed is pretty challenging actually, the genre here is platform puzzle, and the main clue as to how to solve a puzzle is if your little boy gets horrifically maimed, and meets a gruesome death - you are probably not approaching the puzzle in the intended way.  It's not that the deaths are 'gory' as such - the entire games art style is more or less 'film noir' so you see silhouettes, shadows, and everything is seemingly monochrome with a warm hue... But somehow it's quite uncomfortable watching your intrepid little friend get sliced impaled...
 
A lot is being bandied about the internet as Limbo being 'art' as well as game.  It's something I agree with, the art isn't fully of fancy high definition 3D models with shadows and reflections and what not... It's very  simple - but it's achingly beautiful.  Even when your at a particularly frustrating puzzle - it's mesmerizing to watch.  It's also open ended and open to interpretation as in the meaning.  Everything is so vague and abstract - the only information about the narrative you are given is the name 'Limbo' and the tagline; "Unsure of his sister's fate, a boy enters the unknown." . 
 
The game is challenging, some of puzzles are quite tricky to solve, but they are very well implemented, they tend to form part of the environment, stopping it feeling as if you are moving from puzzle to puzzle sequentially.  You often have to back-track to use something you've passed to solve the next puzzle.  There aren't a great deal of enemies in the game either, there are giant spiders in the forest, and what appear to be natives who either attack you or run away.
 
There are several different themed area's in the game, you start off in a forest, eerie and creepy - then end up in a deserted village-like area with shacks and natives.  After traversing some caves you find yourself in a more industrial looking area with water and floating objects becoming part of the traps and puzzle solutions.  This gives way to a roof-top craw, leading to a large hotel sign you have to traverse.  Then after the interior of the hotel you move on to an industrial mill.
 
I would say that at the beginning of the game atmosphere is everything.  As you move on towards the end though the focus seems to move more onto the puzzles and the game loses some it's initial appeal here.  The whole game plays very well, the animations are fluid and intelligiently drawn.  The controls are very simple, with only a jump and a grab button, the whole game is very well designed and drawn.  
 
Some reviewers have criticized the short-ness of  the game.  I would disagree, this isn't a game for a games sake, it's a game and a thought provoking piece of art at the same time.  The focus shifts towards the puzzle over the atmosphere at the end, and as it does this the game becomes less enjoyable to play.  If this trend had continued for another hours play - the game would have lost it's integrity completely.  To steer the game back towards an atmospheric focus would make it seem incoherrant and the build-up would have been lost.  John Cleese once stated of 'Fawlty Towers' that the reason they never made a feature length or film version was the narrative, of build up - then catastrophy would'nt work in another timescale - the same is probably true of Limbo.
 
All in all Limbo is a refreshing change, it's innovative, interesting, beatiful and thought-provoking.  It can be a little frustrating at times, but the desire to progress, and the generally well designed puzzles make you want to press on or try another way.
 
I doubt there will be a great deal of replayability, once you've beaten it you may want to play again for the achievement of a low number of deaths or find some of the hidden areas, but beyond that, I doubt it.  Having said that - it is worth playing, if you like a platform game, a puzzle game or if you are just generally interested in the games industry.  Limbo might njust be important, it might just be the game to slap the industry in the face and say. "Yes 3d Graphics and XBOX Live multiplayer are good things - but there's more to games than that - there is another way!"
 
 Playabilty 8.5/10 
Graphics 10/10 
Story 8/10 
Overall 9/10