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LIMBO |OT| What awaits at the edge of Hell?
- Thread starter Davedough
- Start date
I agree the "boy" in boy in his blob was a little too helpless in my opinion, but I guess that's kind of the point. I will have to finish Limbo before deciding what is the better game...but at this point I think BAHB is a bit more interesting gameplay wise..but it's hard to compare the two when there are no real "items" in Limbo besides the obvious.dark10x said:
Keyser Soze
Member
rhino4evr said:
Ewwwwww
Played through this entire thing stoned as fuck. Holy hell, what an experience. I was genuinely unsettled and spooked throughout every moment. It helped that I literally knew nothing about the game before buying it... I just saw the praise for it and the concept of a boy entering limbo to find his sister, so when I started I kept playing and playing wondering when I would get to the first "story" sequence or an obvious checkpoint or whatever. I played half of the game before I realized those elements aren't present :lol
About the ending:
Still, I know the story wasn't the point of the game. And that's fine. The game itself was damn amazing, definitely ranking among the most atmospheric of anything I have ever played. Short but definitely worth the $15.
Does getting 100% unlock anything or is it basically just for leaderboards and personal satisfaction?
About the ending:
I had the premise of the game right, correct? Didn't they advertise it as a boy searching through limbo to find his sister? But the theory that seems to make the most sense to me is the school bus one. Although I guess him and his sister could have been on the same bus, but I saw a few other people mention that the girl might be his lover?
Anyway, after you fly through the glass after the last puzzle and you are laying on the ground, I was almost positive you were going to get up and be at the very first part of the game again, forced to be in an infinite loop of limbo. I think that ending would have probably fit a little better with the game, especially since what we got for the ending wasn't very interesting at all (mainly because it lasted three seconds and didn't show much)
Anyway, after you fly through the glass after the last puzzle and you are laying on the ground, I was almost positive you were going to get up and be at the very first part of the game again, forced to be in an infinite loop of limbo. I think that ending would have probably fit a little better with the game, especially since what we got for the ending wasn't very interesting at all (mainly because it lasted three seconds and didn't show much)
Still, I know the story wasn't the point of the game. And that's fine. The game itself was damn amazing, definitely ranking among the most atmospheric of anything I have ever played. Short but definitely worth the $15.
Does getting 100% unlock anything or is it basically just for leaderboards and personal satisfaction?
Dude Abides
Banned
sprsk said:
I don't think contrast between foreground and background renders visuals "a mess."
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Got through it, great game. I found dying more funny than creepy.
My only gripe is that this is a classic case of a moody visual filter and dumptrucks full of ambiguity turning into a discussion about what the game/story REALLY means. From of a developer's standpoint, that was a lazy move IMO.
I'd say that's one area where Braid has a leg up in my book. There was a narrative, and a climax, and a [gutwrenching] twist.
My only gripe is that this is a classic case of a moody visual filter and dumptrucks full of ambiguity turning into a discussion about what the game/story REALLY means. From of a developer's standpoint, that was a lazy move IMO.
I'd say that's one area where Braid has a leg up in my book. There was a narrative, and a climax, and a [gutwrenching] twist.
Psychotext
Member
A couple of them were. Especially the one where you had to wait 10 minutes in game to get a chance at it. :lolxbhaskarx said:
Anyway, I'm at 106% now...
does the "few deaths" achievement count towards that total?
Azure Dream
Member
xbhaskarx said:
You seem to be forgetting the one
that was impossible to get without starting a fresh save if you assembled the world 3 puzzle.
Normally I hate any game that requires deaths as part of learning a puzzle. However, it's not an issue in Limbo. The loads after death are near instantaneous, the check points are so generous you almost never have to repeat any content preceding the death, and most importantly, the game has an almost Mortal Kombat like devotion to displaying gruesome deaths. Seeing all the ways to die is part of the fun.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
I finished the game this morning, and have since mopped up a few of the extra cheevos.
My only one complaint is that I don't think there was quite enough variety. The maggots and giant saws came up a few too many times for my liking.
My only one complaint is that I don't think there was quite enough variety. The maggots and giant saws came up a few too many times for my liking.
voodoopanda
Member
I think for a lot of people, death has been ingrained over the years as meaning "failure" in a video game so it causes frustration when it happens. This game mixes it up and uses deaths in an interesting way, so you have to get over the part of your brain that's been trained to think that way. I really liked the deaths and thought they added to the experience and were an important part of the game.
Unfortunately, I think they may be right.EagleEyes said:
If Joe Danger came out as a XBLA exclusive without much hype i doubt it would have sold 50k in one week.
I could be wrong, though, honest, i don't know.
Still, i would have bought Joe Danger on the 360, so it's their loss.
Well, Limbo is a puzzle-platform / trial & error game, and that's absolutely fine, it does one heck of a job in being one.PhatSaqs said:
Mario Galaxy is a 3d platform game (different! different genre!), and it's thanks to good design that you don't have to rely on trial & error.
Sooo... I'll play both, thank you.
It's strange to me that people would bitch about trial and error gameplay with regards to Limbo.
I'm am a whiny bitch when it comes to trial and error gameplay, but aside from having to take some time to work out how a puzzles must be solved, I found there wasn't a lot of trial and error frustration in Limbo.
The only great frustration for me is the fickle jump button. Sometimes when you hold it, you will hang on to an object. Other times when you hold the jump button, you will immediately let go of whatever you just jumped onto. I found it easy to focus pretty much all of my anger about the game into that aspect of the controls.
The game is great. It takes some forethought at times, but I feel like anyone whose played more than five minutes will understand that they must be ready to make a move at a moments notice from time to time.
Oh, and for goodness sake, there is a checkpoint nearly every few feet. There's no great penalty when you die. Maybe that just made it easier for me to tolerate my mistakes.
I'm am a whiny bitch when it comes to trial and error gameplay, but aside from having to take some time to work out how a puzzles must be solved, I found there wasn't a lot of trial and error frustration in Limbo.
The only great frustration for me is the fickle jump button. Sometimes when you hold it, you will hang on to an object. Other times when you hold the jump button, you will immediately let go of whatever you just jumped onto. I found it easy to focus pretty much all of my anger about the game into that aspect of the controls.
The game is great. It takes some forethought at times, but I feel like anyone whose played more than five minutes will understand that they must be ready to make a move at a moments notice from time to time.
Oh, and for goodness sake, there is a checkpoint nearly every few feet. There's no great penalty when you die. Maybe that just made it easier for me to tolerate my mistakes.
If we are going to compare braid to limbo. Braid had the better art direction, music, puzzles. Wait braid was a significantly better game. I did enjoy all the crate pushing this game relied on for 75% of the game. Really was atmospheric just pushing those crates around. The only part of the game that had any atmosphere was the beginning at least for me. It was a mess of a game and dulled me because of it.
BaronLundi
Member
I feel kinda old when seeing complaints about trial and error gameplay. It was the almost the only kind of gameplay back in the days
And I think it's particularly well handled in this one. Loved Braid too but wouldn't think of comparing them nor ranking one over the other.
Good controls + personality + both classic and surprising gameplay = more than I usually ask for in a game. Whatever the length.
And it delivers.
Happy to have paid the price for such an nice (re)creation.
And I think it's particularly well handled in this one. Loved Braid too but wouldn't think of comparing them nor ranking one over the other.
Good controls + personality + both classic and surprising gameplay = more than I usually ask for in a game. Whatever the length.
And it delivers.
Happy to have paid the price for such an nice (re)creation.
toythatkills
Member
So you're saying that a massively hyped PSN release would have failed if it was released on XBLA without any hype? Does that comparison seem fair to you?Wizpig said:
If Joe Danger had been released on Wednesday as part of SoA instead of Limbo, it'd be sitting at 100k+ by now.
sprsk said:
Yeah I don't mind puzzles which are sorta obtuse and difficult to grasp on your first time through - that's fine, provided it is still POSSIBLE to do it right with some thought the first time out.
And I don't mind extremely difficult enemy patterns and such, provided again... that proper skill levels and concentration can do it on a first try.
But for example, early on in LIMBO, there's this part where you have to get across a gap, and if you land on the wrong parts you get squished by a big ass crusher. Unfortunately, there's no viable way to know there's a trap at first since there's no context before or after for this sort of ground to be a trap. It looks like every other ground (thanks primarily to the black/white color scheme). What makes this worse is that right as soon as you traverse THAT trap, there is immediately another trap which does the exact opposite positioning of the floor trap... so the game taught you to be careful about such things after your first death, and then immediately tells you "no, wait, this other way can be wrong too." It's mixed message game design, and really the weakest aspect of the puzzles.
Thankfully the checkpoints in this game are very good, because otherwise this sort of thing would be unforgivable. Fortunately, it's only a mild irritation.
Amir0x said:
It's a giant fucking block with what is obviously a button underneath of it, and that the actual button is the ground on either side is hilarious, and it is even MORE hilarious that the following puzzle switches it around. If you have played even one other video game in your entire life, you should realize what is going to happen immediately.
I died to the first smasher, of course, because of the button fake out. When I saw the second smasher, I said to myself: This time it is a button, and hopping on it will kill you. And what did I do? I hopped on it.
I died to the first smasher, of course, because of the button fake out. When I saw the second smasher, I said to myself: This time it is a button, and hopping on it will kill you. And what did I do? I hopped on it.
That was a solid joke from the developer.
The game is very clearly designed to kill you unrepentently while you learn the puzzles. The metagame is built to make death as painless as possible. The deaths are fun to watch. Unavoidable deaths while learning puzzles is not a flaw in this game. It's a flaw in most games, but not in Limbo.
edit: *spoiled* cause even though it's not really a puzzle, it is a pretty funny joke.
Shake Appeal
Member
This is such a backwards interpretation of game's very deliberate design (which is thematically coherent with what the game is about and is in fact called) that I don't even know where to start.Amir0x said:
The game developers absolutely intend that you have to die to work out some puzzles. This is intentional and by design, will not fix.
You have to die to progress. That is the point. That is the joke. You have been so indoctrinated by twenty years of games teaching you that death is its own punishment that you don't even get the punchline. The whole concept is that there are things worse than death, that death is not the end, that death is a portal to discovery.
When
one bear trap flies down and you dodge it and the other one you didn't anticipate hits you because you dodged
Draft said:
I also enjoyed the trick to that puzzle (shouldn't this be spoiler tagged?). The nice thing is that it was only two switches. If it had been a series of 10, then yes, big problem. But I loved that it forced you to think just a little, and gave you a hint that you need to be on your toes for the rest of the game. Had it only been "hit switch, block comes down", then it would have been the most boring "puzzle" in there. We already had bear traps, after all.
Psychotext
Member
Lots of people thought Trials HD was going to be the "shit game" in last year's summer selection (I'm sure the thread is still around if you look), and most people I know said they probably weren't going to be picking it up (plus obviously the bunch weren't even going to bother to try it)...Wizpig said:
...200k in a week, since gone on to do nearly a million (perhaps over it now, I don't know). Top quality titles rarely bomb on XBLA. The Joe Danger comments were a perfect example of defending a decision that had already been made for them.
Shake Appeal
Member
Re: the piston puzzle, and 'trial and error' gameplay.
If you don't see why this is genius, why this is hilarious, this is not the game for you and you should just fire up a SNES emulator and play Super Mario World.
1. The game presents you with an obvious set-up from every other side-scrolling game (and many conventional cartoons) down through the years: avoid the trap trigger, or be crushed.
2. The game subverts your expectations by having the area around the trap trigger be the trigger; the trap trigger in fact the only safe spot, and you have been mushed to a paste for your assumptions.
3. Having reloaded (instantaneously, above five paces back), the player chuckles to himself, internalizes this new rule, and applies it to the next puzzle.
4. But the second piston subverts the previous lesson by reversing the trigger again. Player laughs heartily (if they appreciate what is happening), and reloads instantly.
5. This is now a memory puzzle, not merely a test of jumping prowess: what do I do for each piston? You are being asked to confront your prejudices, to rewrite the innate, unquestioned principles of "game design" taught to you by copypasting hacks for two decades. You are being asked to do and remember something new. This is a triumph!
6. Having passed the pistons, you are then required to run back through them because of an attacking tribe. The game smiles wryly: "Okay, but can you do it backwards?"
2. The game subverts your expectations by having the area around the trap trigger be the trigger; the trap trigger in fact the only safe spot, and you have been mushed to a paste for your assumptions.
3. Having reloaded (instantaneously, above five paces back), the player chuckles to himself, internalizes this new rule, and applies it to the next puzzle.
4. But the second piston subverts the previous lesson by reversing the trigger again. Player laughs heartily (if they appreciate what is happening), and reloads instantly.
5. This is now a memory puzzle, not merely a test of jumping prowess: what do I do for each piston? You are being asked to confront your prejudices, to rewrite the innate, unquestioned principles of "game design" taught to you by copypasting hacks for two decades. You are being asked to do and remember something new. This is a triumph!
6. Having passed the pistons, you are then required to run back through them because of an attacking tribe. The game smiles wryly: "Okay, but can you do it backwards?"
If you don't see why this is genius, why this is hilarious, this is not the game for you and you should just fire up a SNES emulator and play Super Mario World.
Draft said:
I'm sorry, but it's a flaw. I really could not care less if you lived with it and didn't care about it, but any game which so sloppily changes the rules about such simple things with no possible way to interpret the outcome is flawed.
Of course I knew that the thing above would crush me. I just didn't know what specifically would trigger it. I died on the first one, then I learned how to not die on the first one - and immediately, there is nearly the exact same puzzle a few feet away, and it's completely switched around. So I learned the solution, and then immediately the games says "nope that can be wrong too!"
Let me emphasize this. I do not care if you think the developer was making some cool meta point about deaths in games or some other such bullshit. I only play games for fun. This is poor game design and as such, not fun.
Shake Appeal said:
I am not laughing because it is not fun. I only play games for fun. Nothing in this game is over my head. I hate to break it to you but there is nothing deep or philosophical about the game's intentions, as art house as it wishes it was.
The ol' "this is going over your head" is the defense of bullshit artists with opinions worth less than zero.
If the joke is to mislead the player so that he dies, and there's no way to avoid that first death then cool. Sweet. That's awesome. It's also unfun. Any "joke" that gets in the way of quality game design is poor game design
Psychotext
Member
I agree pretty much with everything you said here. Arguments about game design or not, this part made me smile because I thought it was particularly sneaky. Obviously some people would get annoyed by the setback (not sure why though, no penalty to death in this), but it's the sort of touch that I love to see in games.Shake Appeal said:
Shake Appeal
Member
You want the world to behave the way it always has. You want this game to follow the rules you have diligently learned in every other game, ever, because that's comfortable. But you are alone in an strange new world. This is limbo, not the mushroom kingdom. You are stuck in limbo, just as you are stuck on this puzzle for a brief moment. In this world, death is necessary to progress. You are not willing to learn this, and so the game is not fun to you. But you have to suffer in limbo before you can move on. This is not a happy place, or a fun place, but the developer makes it fun to puzzle through intelligently, and they make the deaths grisly and unsettling entertainment (with extremely generous checkpointing) because they are, in a twisted way, your reward for experimentation.Amir0x said:
Ultimately, they want to subvert your understanding of what is "game design" and what is just inherited laziness. They want you try, and think, and learn, and try, and die, and try again, until you work out what is required of you, and perform it well. You may have to do something new that you didn't expect. This is a good thing.
But you are angry with them for challenging your accepted wisdom: "Dying is bad in games. It is bad when I die. I couldn't not have died there. That's not fair."
Really, dude, it may just not be for you.
Shake Appeal said:
No I just basically want the game to be fun.
This part of your post is hilarious because you're taking your painful and comical over-analysis of LIMBO and awkwardly trying to apply it to my gaming tastes. :lol :lol
Shake Appeal said:
Oh it's not. Not a fun place, you say? Interesting point about that since... oh that's right. I guess I'm pretty much entirely accurate in feeling it's unfun game since that's the developer's HILARIOUS JOKING INTENT OF ULTIMATE SUBVERTED EXPECTATIONS. What a sucker punch to twenty years of lazy development! You go, LIMBO developer dude, you go!
Shake Appeal said:
...kiiiinda difficult to use intellect to solve a puzzle that is literally next to impossible to get right on the first try without death. If you just have to awkwardly throw your body at the traps to learn the order of things, then there's next to nothing intelligent about it.
Shake Appeal said:
It is bad when a game isn't fun. Oops for LIMBO at times.
HurricaneJesus
Member
This game wouldn't be nearly as amazing if you could make it through without dying the first time you played. Most of my enjoyment with this game has been the many deaths. So awesome.
Seems I'm pretty much exactly right (even according to Shake Appeal and Draft). In fact, the only difference is that Draft and Shake Appeal believe this sort of puzzle is a HILARIOUS JOKE that somehow compensates for the shitty game design. To put it another way, they believe the shitty game design is the point. And since that's the point, the developer was obviously successful with what he set out to do!
Shake Appeal
Member
No, it's not a fun place. Have you looked at it? It is grey and dreary and there are giant murderous spiders and bear traps everywhere. It is not controversial that it is not a fun place. But it is a fun game. For me, and most people in this thread.Amir0x said:
Impossible on the first try, sure. But you have to learn and remember the order. And then you are required to reverse that order under duress moments after you would ordinarily have forgotten it in any other game (because you don't usually have to run left in sidescrollers; this is another thing Limbo toys with). You are being asked to experiment, learn, memorize, and then flip that memory backwards under pressure. That requires intellect. It also requires a sense of humour. That the deaths have a thematic weight to them given the game's subject matter is just gravy.Amir0x said:
But it is a fun game. I had a blast all three times I ran through it. Now I appreciate that you aren't having fun because you aren't prepared to drop all the conventional wisdom of every other game on the market and actually engage with something that is fresh and interesting. Which is disheartening when all you have to do is learn a new attitude and a new set of rules. But me, I had a great time. At least until I came on this thread and read some responses and was reminded why so few good games are made, and why many of the ones that are made are indie titles. And even then people complain about the price.Amir0x said:
Psychotext
Member
Or maybe, just maybe different people enjoy different things in games, and it's possible that a designer can still be right catering for one rather than the other.Amir0x said:
Shake Appeal said:
Dark and horrible looking places which are not "fun" (in terms of how it'd be if you were the platformer himself) are still supposed to be "fun places" to actually play in.
Shake Appeal said:
There are plenty of fantastic games made every year. There is also hardly anything new or interesting about LIMBO - it is literally hand picking pieces of other great games and applying it to some twisted puzzle logic. It's more amusing to me that this is your standard for 'innovation', than it is that you believe the game is fun.
We can disagree the game is fun to we're blue in the face, but that's hardly an interesting discussion. It's more interesting to me to engage in your ever escalating fart-sniffing elitism about my inability to OPEN MY EYES and "GET IT", since your posts arguments keep getting more and more spacey and doe-eyed, and less relevant to what is actually taking place in the unfun segments of LIMBO.