From my experience, the character is trying to get through a maze of dangerous puzzles, escape from huge spiders, and maybe chase some native people who are still into hangings. Because the game is challenging and I got so frustrated, I have not finished it yet, and therefore do not know if there actually is a storyline. This brings me to the storyline, or lack thereof. Some may argue that this contributes to the theme of the game, and that it is called Limbo for a reason, but I would counter that you need people to understand the basics of a game in order to understand narrative and have the desire to keep playing. However, for the life of me I could not figure out how to voluntarily pull objects and if it had not been for the class (and the fact that I paid $5 for it…) I would have put the game down for a week or two and maybe would have tried again later. I played video games growing up (although never on a touch screen) so thankfully I was able to figure out the basics-how to run, jump, etc. My first complaint is, of course, the lack of directions. I like that the game took the horizontal/linear action idea and made it into one meant for more adult audiences. The intermittent hanging characters also contributed to this morbid feel. It gave a morbid feel to the game, but at the same time stuck to simplicity rather than trying to make everything seem realistic. I also enjoyed the hints at spurting blood and the ragdoll effect when your character is stabbed by a spider, crushed by a bear-trap, or sliced by a giant razor. The traps are sometimes barely visible, so I was thankful that you are granted infinite amounts of lives during the game. At some points while the character travels from one challenge to the next, the screen gets darker and his eyes light brightly so you can still see him. The dark screen and eerie noises made me jump more than once, yet they are so simply and clean. My favorite part about the game was the art and visual design that was incorporated into the game. If you go with this theory, than you can see how Limbo’s story can be said to run opposite of the popular platformers (especially the most popular Super Mario Bros.), were saving a damsel in distress ends with a happy ending.Īlthough this game frustrated me to no end, I will start off with what I loved about it. Shortly after he awakens (beginning of the game) he continues looking for her on the realm of the dead were he indeed finds her. Another way of looking at it is that the little boy dies in the woods while searching for his lost sister. When he comes close to finding her, he goes back to square one. In fact, it has no ending at all, because as you find out the boy’s limbo is to continue searching for his lost sister. On the other hand, in Limbo though the main mission may be to find your sister in the woods, the game does not have a happy ending. For example, Mario saving princess Peach from Bowser or Megaman and Sonic saving the world from a mad scientist. In fact, if you look historically most if not all the popular platformers in video game history have a heroic main character. Though I attribute this partially to the lack of deep story driven platformers. Like I stated before this game was certainly more emotional and deep than the usual platformer. Compared to any Mega-man game out there this was probably a 4 in a 1 to 10 difficulty scale, but it was definitely the most memorable platformer game I have played to date. Now, it was not a very difficult game, it only took me a couple of hours to pass and only died a handful of times. (Besides that one sentence: “A boy goes into the woods to find his little sister.”) It was through its great use of color and sound that made the game feel a lot more emotional than any other platformer game I had ever played before. It had a very deep story behind it, yet it was never once directly mentioned in the game.
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