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*Minor spoiler warning*
Limbo is a 2D Puzzle Platformer game released in 2011.
Last night, I played through Limbo for the first time and took about 3 and half hours to complete it. Overall, I enjoyed my experience and found the game to be quite fun, especially in the first half of the game. I did have a few issues, but I'll go into further detail about that below. If you want to go into the game not knowing what to expect, I'd say buy it play through it now - it's pretty good. If you want to see my full thoughts on the game, however, then you can continue reading below - just be warned that it may spoil a few things for you.
Firstly, I need to say that the visuals and audio in this game is phenomenal. Just look at the screenshots of the game. They're beautiful. The colour palette is very simple with only black, white, and grey - but this simplicity is its strength, as it helps to create a very thematic and immersive atmosphere. The audio is amazing as well, both the music and the sound effects help to cultivate a somewhat eerie feeling and immerse you into the game (it's worth noting here that I played with headphones in, so that definitely helped the immersion factor).
Adding to the atmosphere is the somewhat unsettling and disturbing imagery, and the variety of brutal deaths that can befall your character should you fail any section. You will die a lot - I certainly did. There's plenty of ways to die, form falling in pits, drowning, being impaled on spikes or cut up by saws. You can even be shot to pieces (literally) but machine guns later in the game. Plus there are numerous other ways to die. This is an especially strong aspect in the early game where you must avoid attacks from two distinct threats. First there's the spider which is suitably horrifying and scary as it persistently hunts you down to mercilessly impale you with its legs. There's also a bunch of other boys running around in the forest. They've built tree forts, placed traps along your path, and as you attempt to pass through, they'll even attack you directly with blowdarts. They have no qualms about killing, and you can find the corpses of other boys who have fallen victim to their traps. Another particularly horrifying threat are the glowing parasites that will latch onto your head a few times throughout the game. They take partial control over your movement, choosing the direction you face and forcing you to move - however you can still jump, and you get to control how fast you move (walking, running, etc). They are introduced when another boy walks straight into a lake and drowns right before your eyes. I thoroughly enjoyed this immersive and somewhat horrifying atmosphere, but I feel it fell a bit flat in the later half of the game, as you move away from the forest and into what appears to be some kind of urban area. In the later half of the game, the threats you face began more generic and less overtly terrifying. Saw blades, machinery, electrified surfaces. Though I admire the variety of threats in the game, these latter ones feel a little more boring than a giant spider and murderous boys. They also get a bit overused - especially saws.
In terms of gameplay, Limbo is pretty fun. It has lots of platforming and quite a few puzzles. As the game progresses both of these elements get more challenging and harder - sometimes a little too hard I think. I made fairly even progress throughout the game - occasionally needing a few tries in some sections, but near the game's end there were a few sections in particular which were very frustrating. I think the main reason for this is the game relies on quick movements and precise timing in some sections. Admittedly this isn't exactly my cup of tea (I prefer to take my time) and some people may enjoy games with these sorts of challenges, but I found it annoying at many points. The problem usually isn't that you don't know what to do, but rather that doing it can be somewhat difficult. One of the worst examples is the bug (Ant? Wasp? Not sure exactly what it is) which you come across eating something on the ground. To progress you need to sneak up on it by moving, then stopping when it looks up to investigate the sound. It's a fairly straight forward section once you know what you've gotta do, but the tricky part is getting the timing and position right to jump at the bug and grab onto its leg as it flies away. If you move too close, it'll detect you and fly away. If you aren't close enough, you won't reach its leg and you'll have to back away and start over again. Getting the right timing took numerous attempts, and it was quite frustrating. There were a few other sections that gave me trouble, but if went into them all I'd be here all day, so moving on...
My final thoughts are still positive. I want to say again just how phenomenal the audio and visual elements of this game are. Though I stand by my belief that the game falters in the second half of the game, it still thinks its pretty good. Just bear in mind that it can be frustrating at times, and often relies on specific timing, so if that's something you don't enjoy or struggle with, I suggest you look elsewhere. If you're fine with this, then I'd definitely recommend the game. I would also suggest playing through with headphones of added immersion.
I'd also like to mention that there are hidden eggs that you can find throughout the game. I only got two (I think they're like eight or ten in total) but if you enjoy searching for that kind of stuff you can probably get a few more hours of gameplay out of this game.