LIMBO stumbles just enough to fall short of being amazing, but the end result is still very much worth playing.

User Rating: 7.5 | LIMBO PC
Pros: Well-designed puzzles; Fantastic atmosphere; Good pacing

Cons: Too much trial-and-error; Controls aren't set up for precision demands of later puzzles; Can't rebind keyboard controls

I wish Limbo was more like its first half-hour. While I enjoyed the experience, something definitely got lost midway through the experience that keeps Limbo from achieving its greatest potential, and merely relegates it to the status of being good.

The game loads up and starts seamlessly as a young silhouette of a boy awakes in a dark forest. Only faint blurry shapes in the forest can be made out, and everything else is covered in a foggy shade of grey. You assume control of the boy and your only controls are to move left or right. Nothing is explained and everything is mysterious.

As you wander to the right, you find some flies and bodies: death. Even though the game has been deliberately dark and moody up to this point, the first body is still shocking. Even more shocking is the first time the boy dies, probably snapped into several pieces by a bear trap. Of course, if you're attentive, you'll likely notice that there is a bear trap and that something is dead nearby: connect one thing to the other and you can dodge the trap with ease. You come upon a body hanging from a rope and another bear trap and…I won't spoil the rest, but this early puzzle is pretty neat.

Basically, the beginning of Limbo is truly amazing. The atmosphere is cohesive, absorbing, and disturbing all at once, the puzzles are intriguing (but always logical), and the game can be brutal (keeping in tone with the atmosphere), but you can easily avoid harm if you pay attention. And every now and then you have a bit of action to shake up the pace a bit and keep you on your toes. In a way, Limbo almost feels like a 2D puzzle platformer in the vein of Dark Souls.

…And then around the point where the game deliberately messes with you with floor switches, things drop a bit in quality. At one point the game features two things that look like buttons sitting under giant weights. Step on the button and as you expect the weight drops. Except that the silhouette representing one of the buttons looks just like the silhouette representing the ground surrounding the other button, and vice versa. Basically, nothing clues you into how that puzzle works, and it's sadly not the last time the game does something that arbitrary and untelegraphed.

Don't get me wrong, the game is still pretty worth playing after that: the puzzles are all fantastic, the atmosphere is great, and the pacing is pretty good, except one thing: trial-and-error practically becomes the main mechanic. Instead of observing carefully and planning puzzle solutions like you could at the beginning of the game, you have to run the little boy headfirst into almost certain death until you gather all of the necessary information to solve the puzzle. Fortunately checkpoints are frequent, so you rarely have to repeat TOO much of the game, but nonetheless, the sheer volume of death kind of numbs you to the experience compared to the first half hour of the game.

In any case, Limbo is still a pretty great game. I really can't complain too much about it, since it does several things right. But it does feel like a missed opportunity. If the mystery was retained, and observation continued to be rewarded, Limbo would have really been one for the books. But instead, it's relegated to the status of good puzzle-platformer on the verge of greatness.