This is another review of the XBLA game Limbo. To see the main review by Byrdie, click here.

Limbo is REALLY open to interpretation. So open that it would probably piss a lot of people off. The story telling in the game is so vague, that you would probably miss the fact that "you are looking for your sister" up until the very end of the game (halfway through if you REALLY pay attention) unless you read the game summary. The open end-edness of the game is one of the largest selling points of the game, so if you want a story that is concretely there, don't get this game (I'm pretty sure that the only word that ever appears in that game is HOTEL. No spoken dialogue. Heck, no vocal sound effects whatsoever).

The game is a genre starter. You could say a mystery game. You could say it was a role-playing game. You could say it was an action game. At heart, it would be an “interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” visual novel” game. There are many games that claim that “every choice affects the game”. But in truth, these games have choices that either make very little difference to how the game plays out or just one major choice that just affects the ending of the game. Even the predecessor to this game, Indigo Prophecy , was basically just that. Most games that have this have this bullet-point on their boxes have nothing on Heavy Rain. I went into the game with high expectations, and I was not disappointed
I know for a fact that many of the seemingly miniscule things that the you do in this game have just about as much of an effect as the major choices in the game. I wish I could go into detail, but that’s something for you to experience yourself. And if you want proof, ask a friend to play at the same time you are, and ask each other about your separate experiences with the game. I swear that the game will play out almost completely different for each of you.
I walk into a room unnecessarily while investigating this house, and get clocked in the head and end up trapped in a basement. Unlike my friend, who went in, got what she needed, and got out. My OTHER friend accidentally got drunk and ended up having his character experience a premature death.
And that was only a glimpse of the possible outcomes of ONE level. It could end up being very short and simple, or it could end up being very drawn out and risky. It all depends on what kind of player YOU are.
Yes, the game does lead up to a certain final event, but the way the event plays out takes into an account almost EVERYTHING that has occurred through the whole game. Certain characters might not be there and certain characters will either succeed or fail(and they can) in their missions.
Many points of the game are super-intense. Every event of the game occurs in real-time most have a lot of player involvement, meaning that you are given many choices, even during the cut scenes, that you need to make, and you aren’t given an infinite amount of time to make those choices. There are many quick-time events that usually give you very little time to react, keeping you tense every second of the game. Also add the fact that your character has many chances to die during the game. That’s right. Each character you control can DIE at almost ANY point in the game.
My experience with the controls came to me like second nature, but for some others, it may take some time getting used to. If you aren’t a fan of Silent Hill/Resident Evil tank controls, you might have a bad time while playing. Other complaints that I heard other people voice revolved around some scenes that require you to hold down a combination of many of the buttons on the controller to do actions. With some of the situations, it seems very fitting. The character is doing something that requires extra precision, and these controls is the game’s way of having you experience the same pressure.
And of course, the major point of the game, the story, is fantastic. You could either really care, or really hate some of the characters. It’s so fantastic that I won’t tell you anything about it other than the game has some awesome twists…
Now, buy or rent? Well, the game is definitely worth a play through. You HAVE to complete this game ONCE. But after that, you learn that the game is definitely surrounds a few number of major plot points, but once you’ve experienced that, the thrill really disappears. You really only play certain points of the game just to see how they can play out differently. The game is a must play, but not really a replayable game. A definite rent. A fantastic game, but I don’t know if you should spend your hard earned money buying and keeping the game.
You might see that this review is shorter than most of my others, but that's because I accepted the idea that reviews are impressions and opinions. Unlike my other reviews, were I explain unnecessary mechanics like controls, or go into things like graphics if they don't need to be brought up, I just say what needs to be said: What I thought of the game. If the graphics stood out that much, I would've mentioned them, but they really aren't anything special. If they were outstanding or terrible, than that's when I would mention them.

This will basically act as my review for Dragon Age: Origins because I do not want to play this game anymore...

This game is KotOR and Mass Effect gone wrong. BioWare sadly succeeds to disappoint.

Let's get to the first subject. The gameplay. The gameplay in general is basically BAD! It takes basic combat system back from KotOR, except took two steps backwards back with it. You choose your basic weapon attack with the X (on the PS3. A on the 360) and combine special moves/powers with the other face buttons. Instead of actually doing the moves yourself, you watch your character do the moves for you while the computer does a lot of math calculating the damage done (for people who have trouble understanding, think World of Warcraft). You control your squad of four and switch between them while doing this at the same time and you've got your basic combat. What they've done wrong with this that even KotOR did right was that BioWare took away the ability to pause and queue up attacks. Also, while you are controlling a character, you have to repeatedly keep clicking the normal attack button to attack, instead of a normal auto-attack.You also can't really tell whether or not your character is dealing any damage. You don't get a real feeling of impact with your weapons and spells. One good thing they have added to this game a 'tactics' feature which allows you to tell what your AI characters what to do when a certain situation appears (ex. "close range with one enemy" >> "do certain attack", "close range with two or more enemies" >> "do special ability".) This is a nice concept but it doesn't work very well with the mages since they want to waste all their mana thanks to these tactics, so you still have a little bit of babysitting with your teammates, but if you only have one mage in your party, there's really nothing bad about it, all you have to do is play as your mage during large battles.

Nothing else is really different about this game from other RPGs. You have your basic inventory system (loot some stuff, wear the best stuff, give your spare stuff to everyone else, and sell everything else to merchants), except they actually have an encumbrance system (the heavier the stuff is you carry, the less you can carry, and you will be unable to pick up anything else if you reach your maximum encumbrance). You have your basic leveling system (you have your basic attributes that you assign points to (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, etc.), you choose special skills the more you level up (skills like Combat, Herbalism, Trap-Making, etc., which all have four levels of specialty, ex. Basic Combat, Advanced Combat, Expert Combat, etc.). They still have your very in-depth dialogue system, but sadly, since your character doesn't have a voice actor (because there are definitely way too many lines of dialogue for the three kinds of races with both sexes your character could be), you have to read all your responses word for word, instead of Mass Effect's great dialogue system that came up before the person finished his/her sentence and you were able to choose the actual attitude of the conversation instead of the exact sentence for each response (it also seemed to flow a lot better in Mass Effect because of this. Now, it's "listen to the response, read over all of your available responses, and choose the one that fits your character most". There's a lot more moments of silence and characters standing still). It's still very black and white about which responses are good and which ones are bad and which ones are neutral, they even take the stupid step of showing you the exact effect of what your conversation did (ex. you say something Morrigan approves of, "+5 Morrigan approval", or you say something she doesn't approve of, "-2 Morrigan approval"). I feel this is a lot more old school then next-gen, where you should be able to tell how much she approves of you by her attitude towards you during that conversation...

One thing that I am slightly disappointed in is the structuring of the side-quests. They made it so they are more of add-ons to the main quest (ex. while you are heading for some certain boss, could you please get a certain item on your way there). It makes go though the long game a bit easier, but it unfortunately detracts from any variety any of these side-quests could have. It's not like you could completely detract from your main mission and explore and enjoy the world you are in.

Now to talk about what is probably the worst part about this game, the graphics. I don't know how they look on the PC, but on the console versions, they are an eyesore to look at. The environments look good from a distance, but you don't need to be very close to them to realize the bad texturing. I don't know if this is the same with the Xbox 360 (as I've heard this is a non-existent problem there), but the frame-rate is very unstable. This can drive you crazy especially in the larger fights when the PS3 can't seem to control all the action going on (and you think it would with all it's "power) and the game starts to clutter itself and make a mess of the screen. It doesn't help that the character actions aren't even that complex. It's all the same basic swinging of the sword or the raising of the hand to cast an awful looking spell. It doesn't help that the characters don't even seem to respond to damage. All they do is the basic jerk backwards or do the generic stumble backwards then forwards then fall when they die. The only exciting kills are when you finish off bosses, which are reminiscent of a God of War quicktime cutscene, but without the quicktime events.

One problem that isn't very big but is very noticeable is the lag in the game's menu screens. It's very similar to the lag in Fable 2's menus, where it takes a weirdly long amount of time to switch from screen to screen. Definitely not as long as Fable 2's, but slower than it needs to be.

What's the worst of all the graphics are the character models. They just don't look human (or humanoid in the case for the dwarfs and elves). Looking at them when they speak to you in the close-up camera during dialogue is pretty repulsive. You can basically see the polygons that make up their faces. Now, I do understand that this game has been getting much better reviews on the PC version so all of these problems may be completely gone on that platform, but as for the PS3 version, these graphical problems will definitely get in the way of any attempts of trying to enjoy this game.

The music isn't anything special, and the sound effects couldn't be anymore generic or badly compressed. The voice acting is decent, and I didn't notice anybody sounding exactly like anybody else. It seems that all these new RPGs have one star voice actor that only stays for a very short time in the game. This game is no different, as it stars the same person who voiced Al Mualim from Assassin's Creed as a character who is important but doesn't last very long. That's all I have to say about the sound.

The story is the only thing that seems to make me want to play this game any more than I don't want to. The main quest itself is very generic good vs. bad, but the game has enough interesting parts to it that I want to see what happens next. From being sent into a dream world (or in this game's case, a nightmare) to trying to save a boy from the influence of a demon, this game wants you to just keep working just so you can see the conclusion of all these situations.

Your squad's back-stories could be interesting in a sense, but since I have delved into the Middle Age-y world very heavily influenced by Tolkien, I really have no interest in their origin, but much rather their life-story. In my seven or so hours of reluctantly playing the game, the story and the characters stories are the only part of the game I really want to get into.

What seems to be the problem is that this game even feels like it's on the wrong platform. The graphics are awful on consoles and the gameplay controls are obviously bad replacements of a mouse and keyboard. It pains me to say this, but if you ignore the story, BioWare has crafted what I like to call "another RPG". It's what I use to describe RPGs that rely too much on the story and don't take the time to perfect the actual gameplay or presentation. Everything in this game just seems so lacking. Let's just say that this game is just a step above that, if not a very tiny step.

As I am writing this review, I acknowledge that I haven't given this game the proper "reviewer" chance that I should be giving it, and that I'm probably not playing it on the platform BioWare wanted me to play it on, but this game has so many things that want to drive me away from it that I can't continue to. There are just much better games out there right now that you shouldn't have to waste your time with something like this. I know it sounds harsh, but for someone that has spent hundreds of hours in games like Mass Effect, Morrowind, Oblivion, KotOR and Fallout 3 (though I have some problems with this game as well, but I won't get into that now), I have to say that this game is pretty boring. I would highly suggest staying away from this game on consoles because it seems like such a PC game. Reading large amounts of dialogue and repeatedly clicking a button to attack is probably something you don't want to be doing on a TV. If you must play this game, I'd strongly recommend you go for the PC version, but otherwise, stay away from it.


Written by Kaillif Ammen [Gamertag: Gloqwi]