Never let it be said that Xbox Live is not a great and noble system, basking in glorious Gold Membership one can download films, the latest demos, and even patch those niggling bugs that have been spoiling our most recent purchase. Yet beyond this is it serves a far greater good, giving a platform for the independent games developer. Much like the indie-film director the games developer is not slave to market research, focus groups and corporate stooges interfering with the creative process. With this freedom the indie-developer can experiment, innovate and attempt something original.
Such is the case with Danish developer Playdead, who have created a truly remarkable entity, a dark and disturbing platformer. The platformer has long been dominated by the gay abandon of Mario and Luigi, Sonic and Knuckles, Kirby and well whoever it is that Kirby's bumming in the slash-fiction. Rather than opting for bright-environments, unthreateningly grumpy enemies and mindless coin collection, Playdead has created a monochromatic world of fiendish puzzles, unexpected violence and charming creativity.
Having selected new game from an uncluttered menu, the scene opens onto a forest, entirely rendered in deepest blacks, muted greys and hazy white. It was some twenty seconds before I realised nothing had happened, and I should be doing something, I press X then trigger then A and finally two little dots appear, the eyes of our avatar a small and vulnerable looking boy. One cannot help but be entranced by the isolation so effectively conveyed by the simple decision to avoid the usual colour, plethora of ladders and waddling grunts. The wind whistles eerily and convincingly through the branches, while the footfalls of the running boy realistically echo into the emptiness. It’s not long until we encounter our first hazard, a spike trap easily cleared by jumping, later three bear traps that, unless pulled apart by the action button form an unsurpassable and lethal barrier. Stepping on one will causes it to snap shut on your body, grimly decapitating you, this first death setting the tone for many more to come.
It immediately becomes apparent after having tried to clear a stagnant pool infested with flies by leaping over a box and promptly drowning for the umpteenth time that Limbo is asking you to use that most infrequently employed of gaming instincts, common sense. Play enough games and you soon realise that there is common sense and gaming sense. Gaming sense is what tells you to keep hold of the ultimate super-weapon until you encounter the final boss, gaming sense is what tells you that all boxes floating in a lake are to be jumped on one from an another. Very few games ever ask you to use common sense, as though worried it would distract from the fantasy. Those few that do, Portal and Half-Life to name but two, suddenly appear fiendishly difficult as all your gaming reactions are frustrated, should I be shooting these crates or climbing them? These default reactions the legacy of a decade or more where games had been limited by both computing power and developer creativity, just because you look like you can climb that wall, doesn’t mean you can. In Limbo however these instincts must be ignored, don’t try and jump over the box, drag the box out of the pool to jump on the rope you couldn’t reach, of course so simple! However what raises these cognitive challenges beyond pure puzzle solving is the pure morbid imagination which accompanies them. In the first section of the game our tiny hero is forced to flee a giant spider, I’m not generally afraid of spiders but the sheer tenacity of this one had me quaking in my boots. Having de-limbed it with a bear trap and crushed it with a boulder I thought it was gone for good, yet it came after me again, dragging its hairy body with just one leg remaining. After getting over the initial anger at this arachnid’s cheek of having followed me so far, I was presented with a very Limbo like conundrum, how to scale a cliff too high to jump which also had razor sharp spikes at the bottom. As I stood there pondering I noticed the spider was still flailing its leg at me with futile desperation, a cruel thought struck me, and I grabbed hold of the appendage and began to drag it toward the spike pit, only to have the leg come off in my little hands. I then rolled the spider’s roly poly head and body into the pit, providing the perfect height for me to scale the wall.
This darkness is not however without a sense of humour, if you’re sense of comedy is that way inclined, and though incredibly short and very expensive for the total hours of enjoyment provided, Limbo is one of the few games on the market that performs so consistently and surprises with such regularity. There is currently a debate over whether games can claim to be art, though most “legitimate” forms currently deride such a notion, it wasn’t so long ago that cinema had its own artistic corner to fight. However I defy anyone to play this game and not feel a little touch of the uncanny, that tingling that only great cinema and great literature can bring, not bad for an xbox live game.
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