Pixelation: Limbo Bored Me To Hell

[pixelation | weekly gaming & life column every wednesday or uh thursday]

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I picked up and played through the XBLA game Limbo yesterday. I had heard so much god damn fawning about it, watched a video about it and deemed it dope, and had tons of expectations. I paid way too much, stared at the download bar, and booted the son of a bitch up.

I was bored within moments.

Aesthetically, the game was everything you want in some indie game to fawn over. Dark and brooding? Word. Lack of UI which is totally innovated (except not really)? Word. Simplistic visuals? Word. It was a paint by numbers indie game. And everyone seemed to love it. But me.

What the fuck was going on?

It was during my aggravation at having to push around blocks and listening to the (not really) beautiful swirling ambient music that I had a moment of clarity. A thunderous strike of denouement. I play games like a fucking buzzsaw. Perhaps Limbo is generic and boring (I think it is), but more than likely it couldn’t have been further from my preferred type of game. As a caffeinated mess, I twitch whilst holding the controller. I run into everything. I want to smash through walls and rip people apart.

I said, “Perhaps this isn’t your type of game!”

I need constant motion.

I don’t know when I got this way, perhaps as I evolved into a caffeine addict strung out on website refreshes, compulsively milling newsfeeds for content worth posting here. Movement is necessary. Movement is essential. Trying to fuck around with electromagnetic switches in the middle of some dimly lit purgatory?

Or something?

No thanks.

I’ll pass, kthnx.

I was disappointed in myself.

I mean, who doesn’t want to champion the beautiful work of indie bliss? Who doesn’t want to applaud something for trying something new, who doesn’t want to say “see, games don’t have to cost 3-zillion republic credits to succeed!”

But.

But maybe!

Maybe Limbo really isn’t that special. What’s so good about it? Is it the atmosphere? Perhaps. Is that what everyone is feeling? Yeah, you can see the guy’s eyes, but nothing else! It’s dim and dank! But are we as gamers so desperate to champion the indie that we’re ignoring the fact that maybe a lot of them aren’t that good?

Or is it me?

I still don’t know.

I know that I don’t need enormous blockbuster visuals and a gajillion polygons at the screen at the same time to be content. I’ll take platforming any day of the week. Stick a big blob of pixels on a screen and command me to leap from moving platform to moving platform and I’m in Heaven. Seventh Heaven, even! Valhalla! With jacked Thor and Mjolnir and Loki (preferably in female form.) And so I resent the notion that I simply need to be wowed through modern wizardy to be entertained.

It ain’t that.

But what I do need is something more than a cut-and-dry indie staple. This game feels like the equivalent of That Indie Flick. That is so sophisticated because it’s different. Yeah man, you have your emotionally turbulent male who dresses well. He has a complicated but quirky family who is simultaneously endearing and problematic. He meets a girl. Someone plays The Shins. They talk on the subway or something.

Yawn.

Yawn.com

And listen man, before you charge me with not liking slow or indie movies, I do. Just not ones that star that guy where the dialogue takes place over acoustic guitars and a sentimental lead singer.

I think what I’m trying to say is that Limbo is mediocre, but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. We simply weren’t compatible. She wanted to just stand there and marvel in the idea of flicking levers for twenty minutes. Me? I was screaming at the top of my lungs over the spaghetti and meatballs about how fucking great the nineteen free refills were. Thumbs buzzing. Tunnel vision. Ready to jump, leap, destroy.

I don’t do mundane. But even if I did, I don’t think I would have enjoyed Limbo.