Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

The Good: Strong art direction pointing everything presentation-wise to a palpable eerie mood; gory without being cheap; perfect physics; challenging in the right measure.

The Bad: Fails at keeping up with its own standards.

A boy lying down in a foggy forest slowly awakens. His vivid eyes (nothing but a pair of little flashlights in the colorless environment) are the sole hint of life in what would otherwise be a soulless silhouette. As you're allowed to explore the environment (under a mere "soundscape" instead of a regular soundtrack) it will become easy to realize (actually to really "feel" through the boy's controls and animation) how fragile the protagonist is. But getting stronger is a requirement to progress here--at cost of the player's humanity.

This is how LIMBO starts. The surroundings are a bit creepy but it's simply impossible not want to explore them. And the timing is perfect: get yourself under the boy's skin and start to feel comfortable just to face the first barbed death--first of many, many others yet to come.

LIMBO manages to make a very strong first impression in any player who dares to launch it regardless of the gamer's preferences. It's disgusting as much as it is compelling, and I can't say much more than that without spoiling your bad trip. But... those mixed feelings last only for 90 minutes or so--roughly the first third of the game.

Yes, part of that comes from the fact the player eventually stops caring about death--and if it was only for that LIMBO would be a stainless masterpiece. But unfortunately most of it falls into the developer's account due to a severe shift to a more straight-forward puzzle-platformer approach. As if it was impossible to keep pushing the player further emotionally--but if that was the case it should have been better to leave the game "unfinished" and charge less for a pack-a-punch experience.

OK, the physics are neat, the puzzles are smart--no cheating, no excessive brain melting--but LIMBO is all about its settings... which were simply dropped out at some point of the journey for a longer and more bland "value" raise.

Still a great game as it is, LIMBO is somewhat disappointing for raising such a good premise just to get lost in its own mazes.