LIMBO (PS Vita) Review by Jason Bonnar

Game Review: LIMBO (PS Vita)

LIMBO is an action horror adventure puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. LIMBO was originally developed and released on other platforms in 2010 by the Danish indie developer Playdead were it was met with mass critical acclaim and many awards. Prior to LIMBO’s release; it had already earned such awards as the Technical Excellence and Excellence in Visual Art awards at the Independent Games Festival 2010 (IGF), alongside the award for GameSpot’s Best Downloadable Game with various Best of Show nominations for Best Platformer by IGN and Best Puzzle Game by GameSpot. After the release of LIMBO; the game went on from strength to strength as it progressively tallied up a huge amount of nominations and awards, such as the Best Indie Game award at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, while also earning nominations in the categories for Best Debut Game, Innovation and Game of the Year and winning the award for Best Visual Art at the 11th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, alongside further success at the Interactive Achievement Awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences were LIMBO was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction and Outstanding Innovation in Gaming, but won the Adventure Game of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design awards. Double Eleven have brought the award winning LIMBO to the PlayStation Vita and PS3; you have most likely heard of Double Eleven as they have a great pedigree of their own with such great games as PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate, Frozen Synapse Tactics, PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate and most notably of all Little Big Planet PS Vita.

The story revolves around a boy who enters a state of LIMBO following the uncertainty of the safety of his sister. The character design of the boy is rather simple in the sense that the lead character, alongside all of the enemies are silhouettes, therefore not providing much detail, but actually contributing a lot to the tone and atmosphere of the game.

The environment design has the same approach to silhouettes as the character design, but adds a contrast of light to significantly enhance the dynamics of the silhouettes by providing something for them to play off against. The environments can be rather daunting at times as they include a range of traps with enough bite to decapitate the lead character; spiders and various monsters offer a scary dark presence that can pop up at any given time to provide a real scare; water hazards that the main character can be drowned in; boulders that are easily large enough to crush; smaller flaming rocks that can set you on fire; and much more besides.

The puzzle elements are a consistent presence that will put your logical ability and skills to the test throughout the story that will see you perfectly timing jumps to avoid various hazards and traps; pushing and pulling objects into position to be able to reach a higher platform; swinging back and forth on ropes to make a crate fall from a rope to have an object to appropriately position; balancing two heavily weighted objects with a pulley system; and much more besides.

LIMBO supports cross-buy between the PS3 and Vita, although it unfortunately does not support cross-save, so you will not be able to continue from your previous progression on the Vita version when playing the PS3 version and vice versa. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that you will be purchasing both the PS3 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase.

The controls are intuitive as they are simple to learn, although there is no touch screen control scheme. The control scheme consists of pressing X or triangle to jump; holding square or O to perform an action, such as pushing or pulling an object; changing the direction of the left analogue stick or alternatively pressing left or right on the d-pad to move the character; and pressing start to display the pause menu.

The graphics are presented as though you were watching a film on an old fashioned film projector with flickers of light and dark tones, while the graphics are intentionally obscured around the edges and are occasionally blurred particularly in the far background to really drive the stylistic approach, which actually helps in providing a true atmosphere and eeriness to the surrounding environments and the gameplay in general.

The presentation of the game is rather minimalist, while being solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, options menu and various gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick, touch screen and rear touch pad, but that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The background of the main menu sets quite an atmospheric scene for the game ahead as the environment is dark, while the LIMBO logo is white and provides light to an otherwise dark background.

The audio purely consists of sound effects without any music, which if anything is an inspired design choice as it allows the sound effects of the audio design to work in perfect harmony with the graphical design to create a real sense of tension and foreboding in regards to the enemy or trap that could be waiting just around the corner. The sound effects include walking, running, sliding down rocks and climbing ladders for the main character, while the eerie atmosphere amongst the ambience includes a howling wind, insects, crows and more besides that create those incidental sounds required to really increase the atmosphere.

The trophy list includes thirteen trophies with nine bronze trophies, three silver trophies and one gold trophy. You will earn the first trophy almost immediately as you only have to take a few steps to the wrong direction as you walk to the left and collect an insect egg, which is one of eleven trophies that are dedicated to finding insect eggs in particular areas of certain chapters with some being pretty tough to find. The Where Credit Is Due silver trophy is difficulty enough as it requires you to complete the game and there are quite a few hard puzzles and precise platforming elements to overcome on the way

to completing the game, while the No Point In Dying silver trophy has to be the hardest trophy in the entire game in one sitting with five or less deaths, which is almost possible considering the amount of hard puzzles and precise platforming elements that you would have to overcome almost flawlessly. I would estimate depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips for finding the insect eggs and overcoming some of the harder puzzles and precise platforming elements that it would take between five to ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels, although LIMBO is naturally difficult due to the core elements of the gameplay, such as the puzzles and platforming. The puzzles can be quite hard to figure out and will most probably take multiple efforts to successfully progress beyond the harder puzzles, while the platforming elements require precision jumping and timing in order to guarantee your progression to the next area.

There are no multiplayer components or online leaderboards to be seen in LIMBO, although I do not believe it is any kind of loss to the gameplay or experience as multiplayer would not necessarily fit with

the concept or atmosphere of LIMBO. However, I could have saw online leaderboards for collecting all of the insect eggs in the quickest period of time; a leaderboard for completing the game with the fewest deaths and another leaderboard for completing the game in the quickest period of time.

The replayability of LIMBO really stems from the experience of the unpredictability of not knowing what is coming next or what is around the corner as the pace of the gameplay quite regularly switches from slower paced to faster paced puzzles and platforming to create a more diverse experience than you may anticipate, which urges you to return to the game as often as possible.

Overall, LIMBO builds the atmosphere and tension alongside the puzzle and platforming gameplay to create a truly special and exceptional experience that will have you permanently gripped. You should definitely add LIMBO to your must purchase list, especially if you are a fan of action, horror, adventure or puzzle games as LIMBO has it all and for a price of only £7.99 for both the Vita and PS3 versions; you simply cannot afford to miss a game of such quality!

Jason Bonnar

10 out of 10

Analysis