There are no cut scenes, there is no dialogue, there is no on-screen text ever. Rarely has a game told its story in such a subtle but powerful way. The Boy will be horrifically broken and mutilated along his journey, but thanks to his innocent, quietly sad persona and the emotional weight of his journey, his callously savage treatment never ever becomes comedic. And those deaths are brutal, fast and completely uncompromising. Deaths are telegraphed just soon enough to give you the time to realise how the chain of events suddenly in motion will lead to them, before those nightmarishly-paced events play out with almost inevitably fatal consequences. And every reveal, attack, escape and set-piece is executed with such peerless pacing and attention to emotional detail that you’ll be drained every time you play it.ĭangers are introduced (or hinted at), then removed to play on your mind during a quiet part of your journey. Ambiguous shapes tease with simultaneous promise and threat. Nightmare creatures lurk almost in plain sight. Those silhouettes mask a multitude of horrors, and while I’d set fire to my own feet before relating any spoilers, I will tell you that you’ll rapidly learn not to trust anything you see in Limbo. This is intelligent horror executed sublimely, with real thought and depth.Ībove: Friend, enemy, or somewhere in between? There's only ever one way to find out. And I’m not talking about the usual video game approach of gratuitous gore and jump-scares. Limbo is one of the most genuinely disturbing games I’ve played in a very long time. And that's even more important when you consider that. As well as bringing about fantastic gameplay, it’s a philosophy that also creates a powerful bond with The Boy himself. There is no tutorial beyond what you learn of your abilities first-hand, and every solution comes about through nothing less than creative thought and experimentation. Limbo is a game that really trusts the player to think. Every puzzle requires a different approach or a new way of thinking, and any concept that is repeated is expanded upon immensely as it progresses. With no central tricks or moves to dictate the gameplay, it’s able to explore The Boy’s influence on the world around him with complete freedom. Is a weak surface cracking beneath your weight? What would happen if something hit it with more force?Īnd the best part is that Limbo has a Mario-Galaxy-style philosophy to reusing ideas. Need to stack two crates on top of each other? Drop one on the end of the moving platform that’s sliding in and out of the wall, then quickly push the other underneath it as the retraction pushes it off. Need to obtain an object that’s suspended high above you by a rope? Find your way up there, use it as a platform, then jump to break that rope and drop it to the ground. Above: The boy is aware of his surroundings, but will sometimes only come to understand them directly
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