Limbo - review

When I was growing up in the eighties, UK TV's Channel 4 would frequently show, late at night, animation shorts produced from behind the Iron Curtain. Not exactly Mickey Mouse, they were often dark, grainy and disturbing. Maybe they were in some way a veiled critique of communism, or maybe that's what   forty years of communism does to you (though Stalin was a big fan of Disney, apparently). To a 13-year old awaiting a  'red triangle' programme, they were a nuisance but, looking back, the films were actually very good.

It was these shorts that were brought to my mind when I first played Limbo, a new  XBLA game. The visuals also reminded me of David Lynch's Eraserhead and of German expressionist silent cinema,  as Limbo is completely monochromatic  - a unique look for a videogame (well, since ZX81 days, anyway).

Limbo is a puzzle-platformer, like last year's media darling, Braid.  In the game, you play as a small boy, shown only in silhouette with two blinking dots for eyes (poignantly, these wink out when he dies).  The boy has to proceed from left to right in a scrolling expressionist landscape of dark forests, factories and towns, avoiding a variety of ways in which the landscape (and the odd giant spider) can dismember him.  And I  really do mean 'a variety of ways' - I was chopped to pieces by buzz-saws and fixed machine guns,  electrocuted, squashed by pile-drivers, fell from great heights, drowned, impaled by arrows (launched by other small boys), squashed by boulders and more.  Even though the boy is only shown in silhouette, these deaths are often graphically depicted (the 'gore' can be muted in the options screen).

This is probably the jolliest scene in the game

The objects and structures in the game behave rigidly to their own rules and it is by understanding these rules - reversing gravity for example - that the player can work their way through the spatial puzzles set by the developers.  As with Braid, the player gets a great sense of achievement in working out a puzzle that had previously seemed impenetrable, though I thought the difficulty level was significantly lower than with Braid (not that I wasn't stuck a few times).

There is a story attached to the game, that the boy is trying to rescue the soul of his sister, trapped in Limbo but this has very little connection to what you're actually playing. Back in the olden days when I started gaming, programmers would often, I have since read, make a game and then add the 'story' (essentially just for the text on the cassette insert) at the end - space empire, aliens, lost kingdom, curse, blah blah blah. Limbo's 'story' reminded me of that - it seemed to have very little intersect with what I was doing, other than in the name. I think, like the best art, players can bestow their own meaning on what they see in the game, rather than having the artist tell them explicitly what the work is about.

Yes, that is a dead body in the right-hand box

I wondered as I was playing, enraptured by the art style, would I have been so keen on it if it was a Wario game (instinctively, I feel it is more of a Wario game than a Mario one) and had more conventional visuals. Rather shallowly, I think I probably would not - the art style is so bound up with game, I think it would be a far lesser game if it had conventional 'videogame' graphics.  That probably says more about me than Limbo though.

Fantastic

I don't think I could write about Limbo without mentioning its price and length. The full game is 1200 MS points, which is in the top bracket of XBLA prices but it can be completed on the first play through  in only 4 hours (and far more quickly in successive play throughs, when the you know how to solve the puzzles). There is a trial game that you can download for free, so at least you can see if it is the type of thing that you'd like before paying the money over but, even if it is, the '£/gameplay hour' ratio is quite steep. 


Personally, I think it is worth it. After playing the trial and liking it, I rationalized that I'd pay a similar price for a blu-ray disc for a film with a shorter running time and not feel cheated and, if the game was of similar quality, the player should not feel cheated either.

Metropolis,  anyone?

I thoroughly enjoyed Limbo from start to  all-to-quick finish.  It might not be to everyone's taste - my wife said to me while playing it 'Are you still playing that horrible, depressing, game?' -  but if you want to play something totally different from anything else released this year, give Limbo a try. 

How I learned to stop worrying and love Achievements (again)

When I first bought my Xbox 360 in the summer of 2007, I wasn't all that interested in the Achievements that could be unlocked  from playing games and 'achieving' a certain preset target.  It hadn't been something that I'd paid much attention to prior to my purchase and, as I was unable to hook up to Xbox Live until early 2009 (*waves fist at BT's inadequate broadband provision*), comparisons with XBLA friends was not an issue either.  Consequently, the achievement 'hauls' of the first few  games that I played through to completion - Crackdown 2, Bioshock, Battle for Middle Earth 2 - were quite paltry in comparison to games that I played later on.  I did not bother to check what Achievements those games had and paid little attention to those that I had achieved.

This attitude continued until at least my first 360 bought the farm, around Easter 2008.  After Microsoft replaced my 360, crafted, like the last, with a heat sink carved from the purest Belgian chocolate (destined to last for nearly two years - way to go MS), I began to pay more attention to the Achievements (or 'cheevos') available in games.  This slow process picked up after BT finally deigned to provide barely-adequate broadband to my street ('customers, welcome to the late 20th Century with our 'up to 2MB' broadband', I think their sales literature went) at the beginning of 2009.  Although, I didn't - and still don't -  play much online, I became more aware that there was a large community, with each member having a gamerscore totalling their Achievements and, with a certain school-playground-competitiveness, took to consciously trying to build my gamerscore (as I believe I've mentioned in earlier posts).

Whereas initially I'd played games as and how  I wanted, taking the Achievements as and when they appeared, over time this shifted to encompass looking through the list of Achievements and changing the way I played solely in order to unlock them.

My attitude began to shift with the brilliant Assassin's Creed  II, which I received for Christmas last year.  It is quite free and easy with its Achievements and, in the latter stages of the 43 hours that Raptr says I'd spent on the game, I began to realise that I could, for the first time, 'max' out a game - get all of the 1000 points available (I had around 900).  I had a look at the 'missing' Achievements and one that stuck out for me was for collecting every feather found in the game (Renaissance Italy was, apparently, strewn with white feathers left in inaccessible places).  Collecting all of the feathers would have been an extremely boring and repetitive process.  I play games for fun; I go to work for 'extremely boring'.  I saw no reason why I should 'work' for Microsoft, Ubisoft or my gamerscore in my free time.

This attitudinal change continued over the subsequent months and  reached a head with the sublime Red Dead Redemption.  Rockstar games are very frugal with their distribution of Achievements - I was a third of the way through GTAIV before I gave up in frustration at the lack of checkpoints, yet had under 100 gamerpoints - which I don't have a problem with (they really are Achievements).  RDR was no different and, having put over 20 hours into the game, I still had under 200 points-worth of Achievements from it.  I had a look at those that I didn't have and considered actively seeking them out, or in changing the way I was playing the game - favouring a certain weapon, or only aiming for headshots for example  - and I checked myself.  I was really enjoying the game - one of the best this year and easily my favourite Rockstar game - and I didn't want to deliberately play it in a less enjoyable way, simply to boost a featureless number attached to my gamercard. At the time of writing I have 415 gamerpoints from RDR (in 39 hours of gameplay), all of which were obtained 'enjoyably'.  I'd like to think (and this is certainly my intention) that I will try to avoid 'working' (rather than 'playing') to build my gamerscore in future games too.

The only exceptions to this new policy  are Avatar Awards - items for your Xbox Live avatar, won in game.  I think I will still actively seek these out, probably as they provide a tangible (albeit virtual) reward for in-game success, rather than simply adding to an impersonal score - I feel I actually am being rewarded for achieving something.

I've by no means become  anti Achievements over the last few months  - when one pops up, I always check to see what I got it for and I still compare those that I've received to those that friends have received on the  Raptr site. Last night (technically early this morning)  I unlocked 5 Achievements at once (a record for me) on Red Dead Redemption multiplayer and that was enjoyable (but I was only expecting one, or possibly two, as I hadn't checked the list beforehand).  I'm still attracted to the idea of Achievements generally - I'd sooner that they were there than not -  but I will no longer undertake laborious in-game task for the sole purpose of unlocking an Achievement.

Unless it unlocks a funny hat for my Avatar...

I've won a Rockstar 'Red Dead Redemption' competition!

Ages ago, it seems, I entered a very easy competition on UK gaming site, www.nowgamer.com , to win what was described as a Red Dead Redemption 'goodie bag'.  Last week, out of the blue, my postie delivered a bulging jiffy  bag full of RDR promotional material.  In keeping with the Western theme of the game, it was very much a case of The Good, the Bad and Ugly (I'll leave you to decide which is which).

Firstly, there was a candle in the shape of a bundle of sticks of TNT (every home should have one).  As with my The Conduit MP3 speakers shaped like a hand grenade, probably not something to be taken through airport security any time soon.

Imagine how delighted my wife was at this

Then there's the bizarre but themically-accurate (it is advertised in-game) 'Western' soap,  which, as you can see, is 'tough on blood and manure.  I'm sure it will come in very useful.  

The colouring is from iron oxide, according to the 21st Century labelling.  Nice.

No bagful of videogame promotional material is complete without a t-shirt and the RDR haul was no exception.

It's not super XL - that's a child-sized bench

Gambling sub-games - poker and blackjack in this case  - are a well-developed theme in Western popular culture and they are present in RDR.  The final item that I was sent was a lovely reproduction of the pack of cards used in the game, complete with Mexican 'Day of the Dead' style art and 'authentic' stains.

They also come with an embossed carrying case

Beautifully macabre

The Joker, El Diablo

30-minute gamer, more like

One of the disadvantages of having two obsessions - football and videogames - is that, on occasion, the two clash and something has to give.  Ordinarily, that is not much of a problem - switching between the latest triple-A videogame for an hour and  half of 'Match of the Day', for example. 

During this World Cup, however, playing videogames has taken a bit of a hammering, particularly with matches being played in what would otherwise be peak gaming hours.  Consequently, where usually  I can  expect to spend 10-15 hours per week gaming, I've been lucky to get five hours under my belt over the last month.

There's still plenty I want to play though - I've been inching my way through Red Dead Redemption, I've bought Demon's Souls, I'm playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and I've broken the ground on Dragon Age: Origins  - just no time to do it.  Hence the quieter-than-usual blogging.  

As I type this, it's half-time in the 3rd place play-off game, Uruguay v Germany and the Holland v Spain final is tomorrow.  The premier league season doesn't start for another month, so I should be able to get some gaming in again after tomorrow!

Demon's Souls (PS3) Black Phantom Edition, unboxing

Hardcore (and, apparently, just plain hard) RPG Demon's Souls has recently received a PAL release.  As well as the straightforward vanilla edition, Namco Bandai has  put together a bells-and-whistles special edition, known as the 'Black Phantom Edition'.

I picked this edition up earlier this week (£45, in-store).  I've yet to give it a gametest, so can't comment on the gameplay or its growing reputation as a diamond-hard old-skool test of gaming prowess (which, if true, might limit how far I get through it) but I have unpacked it to see what paying  the extra cover price got me.

Everything comes in a shiny box.  [please ignore unmown lawn in the background]

Inside the box, along with the game, you get a 46-page (A5) hard-cover artbook, a 158-page (A5) strategy guide and the soundtrack.

Mmm, lovely...

The strategy guide seems quite comprehensive, giving descriptions of NPCs, enemies, character classes, weapons, spells, armour, upgrades and a 50-page walkthrough.  This last element is described as a guide to assist the first-time player of the game to get through to the end, rather than the 'best' way of doing so (a business opportunity therefore remains for Prima, Brady et al).

Pages from the walkthrough, showing character classes

The artbook is filled  with the standard concept art that you'd expect from such things (artbook from Castlevania: SotN excepted) .  Very pretty/grotesque but, until I play the game, I have no point of reference.  Looks nice, though.

A fixer-upper

The soundtrack is on CD, a nice change after some recent limited editions (such Red Dead Redemption) just including a download code for this, rather than physical media).  It is held in place on  the inside back cover of the artbook.

And that's it. I think Namco Bandai has put together a great special edition with this package, well worth the extra money (and you can probably pick it up for a fiver cheaper  than I paid, online).  All I need now is some time to play it (maybe after the World Cup has finished).