LIMBO - PS Vita Review

After a recent sale on PS+ I decided to pick up LIMBO again for my Vita after playing about half way and giving up on my Steam copy.

STORY:

LIMBO is a 2D puzzle platformer with no story to speak of. Your character is a small boy who is only seen as a silhouette in a completely black and white world. You wake up and proceed to run right with no other motivation than to complete the puzzles and not die. While there are some hints at plot with hostile native children carrying spears, setting off traps to impede your progress and the appearance of a small girl, there are no dialogue or cut-scenes that give any explanation to who or where you are.

Presentation:

LIMBO is presented completely in black and white which lends to the feeling of isolation and fear throughout the game. You will see things such as giant spiders, corpses of those who came before you, and backgrounds ranging from fairytale forests to the insides of loud industrial factories. If there was one drawback to this visual style, it would be that sometimes puzzle elements are hard to make out unless you are really looking. You can often miss a bear trap on the ground or improperly judge an angle of a slope that will send you careening toward your death. The sound an music are too, kept to an appropriate minimum with the sound of your crunching bones accentuating the silence.

Gameplay:

And you will hear this sound of death, a lot. LIMBO is a game that isn’t afraid to teach you how to overcome it’s puzzles by killing you. You’ll solve one section of the game only to run head first into a spinning saw blade or spike-filled pit. Through this punishment you are taught slowly to respect everything in the environment as dangerous and to pay close attention to the things around you. While the puzzles can be punishing, luckily this is off-set with an extremely forgiving checkpoint system that restarts you immediately before the challenge you just failed.

The puzzles in LIMBO are excellent as well. Starting off from simple platforming and block pushing, and ending on some fiendish timing based puzzles, the difficulty curve is perfect during the games 4-6 hour campaign. While never reaching the “I’m a genius” level of Braid’s puzzle design, there will definitely be times where you will have a satisfied grin on your face after cracking an especially devious, multi-tierd section.

While the game is fairly short, I did enjoy most of my time in LIMBO’s dark and twisted world. And for the price I paid ($3.45), there was nothing to complain about.

Bottom Line:

LIMBO is an excellent pure puzzle-platformer whose truly unique visual style along with dark sense of humor make it a must play for those who like to flex their brains while not minding having them repeatedly caved in by a giant falling block.

8/10