Thrown around for 0$ on multiple occasions by now, with it being free of any price tag Limbo is a pretty great 2-3 hour experience. There's a really thick atmosphere, plenty of great sound effects (love the rumbling) and build-up in presenting its dangers up to around mid-way, when the natural, living enemies completely switch to the mechanical challenges and puzzles.
Its greatest strengths lie the beginning—seeing the spider, the other kids hunting you, and eventually overcoming the big beast—and the transition into the human-made contraptions. You jumpstart a generator and boom: rainfall. Did you open up the ceiling or did you just create a natural phenomena?
There's always been a lot of theorizing about Limbo, but with the release of INSIDE, I'm pretty sure that this was supposed to be like that story: a testing facility for all these different weapons or contraptions, but in here you, the kid the player controls, are breaking in and out of the intended areas in order to find your missing sister. There are some very situational moments, such as only being able to cross a pond because a kid controlled by the bug (the mind-controlling bug returns in Inside) walks into it, allowing you to jump on the dead body, which have me thinking that there is some controlled aspect to it, like something is watching, or that there is an element of "you shouldn't be here."
The later parts are just not as engaging as the opening act. The game should have stuck with the more nature-based dangers. Those were the most tense moments, and if you expect more of that then you are just simply not gonna get it. The bug sections are cool but they don't hold a candle to the spider sections, and I don't think the team behind Limbo really succeeded in telling this story, and that's why Inside reimagines many of its beats but takes it in different directions, for many much more interesting ones. I'm still more into the atmosphere found here, but I will be giving Inside another shot soon, so who knows, maybe I, like everyone else, will just forget Limbo.
For now, I still want to remember it. I think its simple style of presentation and its gameplay were very inspirational for future games, even AAA ones. And there's still ideas worth revisiting in here. Maybe Inside really is a better package for them and I am yet to really appreciate that, but I feel like some stuff is yet to be touched, and as such it comes with a recommendation. Even its worst parts, just like its best parts, are super short, so even if just for stats padding, Limbo is still worth playing.
Its greatest strengths lie the beginning—seeing the spider, the other kids hunting you, and eventually overcoming the big beast—and the transition into the human-made contraptions. You jumpstart a generator and boom: rainfall. Did you open up the ceiling or did you just create a natural phenomena?
There's always been a lot of theorizing about Limbo, but with the release of INSIDE, I'm pretty sure that this was supposed to be like that story: a testing facility for all these different weapons or contraptions, but in here you, the kid the player controls, are breaking in and out of the intended areas in order to find your missing sister. There are some very situational moments, such as only being able to cross a pond because a kid controlled by the bug (the mind-controlling bug returns in Inside) walks into it, allowing you to jump on the dead body, which have me thinking that there is some controlled aspect to it, like something is watching, or that there is an element of "you shouldn't be here."
The later parts are just not as engaging as the opening act. The game should have stuck with the more nature-based dangers. Those were the most tense moments, and if you expect more of that then you are just simply not gonna get it. The bug sections are cool but they don't hold a candle to the spider sections, and I don't think the team behind Limbo really succeeded in telling this story, and that's why Inside reimagines many of its beats but takes it in different directions, for many much more interesting ones. I'm still more into the atmosphere found here, but I will be giving Inside another shot soon, so who knows, maybe I, like everyone else, will just forget Limbo.
For now, I still want to remember it. I think its simple style of presentation and its gameplay were very inspirational for future games, even AAA ones. And there's still ideas worth revisiting in here. Maybe Inside really is a better package for them and I am yet to really appreciate that, but I feel like some stuff is yet to be touched, and as such it comes with a recommendation. Even its worst parts, just like its best parts, are super short, so even if just for stats padding, Limbo is still worth playing.