Author:
Jaime Wolf
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Date:
7/26/2010 8:25:50 PM
Subject:
RE: Limbo
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't like it, as a game I find it to be an overall enjoyable learning experience. I'm trying to figure out if maybe another medium would have benefited Limbo better instead of the video game form the creators chose.
There was a "game" released some time ago called "The Path", more or less a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, the sole objective of the game is to "Get to your grandmother's house" and the only rule is to "Stay on the path", a rule obviously meant to be broken as staying on the path and getting to your grandmother's house directly causes the player to "lose", it isn't until you start to deviate from the path and explore your surroundings that the story begins.
The word game is in quotations because one of the things most of the people that played it argue is that it isn't even a game to begin with. Personally, my tilt towards horror, the surreal and the psychological aspect of a tale is what influenced me to trudge along towards the conclusion. I, along with many other people, absolutely hated it as a game, yet were sufficiently intrigued by the premise and overall feel of it to keep going.
Similarly, Killer7, the subject of many a drunken rant, became one of my favorite Gamecube titles when I was done with it. You've got a bunch of crazy laughing monsters trying to blow you up, but the real enemy in Killer7 is a narrative that is so stupidly complicated and all over the place you just can't help but keep going and try to untangle the mess laid before you, and those who stick with it to the very end usually leave satisfied and get enough out of it in return because the game part of it is absolute crap. I wasn't alone either: Even some of the most devout Killer7 fans will tell you that it's a crap game, but you should just play it anyway.
I think at this point the creator would need to consider whether his or her story should be using the video game medium or not.
