Resurrecting a months old thread? I just purchased and played through LIMBO over the last few days and I would like to talk about it a bit.
First off, I really enjoyed it. It's pretty much what everyone says, very dark and atmospheric. I actually thought most of the puzzles were pretty easy except for two near the end. I honestly thought the platforming was better implemented than some of the puzzles (but then I really enjoy jumping about on crumbling architecture. It's one of the reasons I'm so fond of the Prince of Persia games). I wish there was more of it.

And I honestly wish there was a little more to the story. What we have is pretty ambiguous and raises many questions about what exactly is happening. Is our protagonist in a world created by his own mind (several figures resemble boys' fantasy archetypes)? Does he even realize where he is? We never really get an answers and maybe that's partly the point (we're meant to be as disoriented as our protagonist), but it does contribute to the ending being somewhat dissatisfying (more on that later). For me, the final fate of a particularly troublesome (and terrifying) adversary was really the high emotional point of the game.

I do want to discuss the ending a little bit. There is a moment (an awakening) that exactly mirrors the beginning of the game. At that point I was simultaneously cursing and praising the developers in my head for delivering such a gutpunch. I thought they were saying the whole thing was a time loop and this poor kid would be doomed for eternity to suffering horrors to find his friend and then have to start over again and again.

Then the real ending happened, and, while it was was emotionally satisfying, it was a bit of a letdown when they could have said something really tragic to cap off the whole experience. Especially since the high note they leave on is too ambiguous to leave much room for hope.

Still it's an enjoyable short game (with very beautiful graphics). Took me a bit over three hours to complete.

In other gaming, just started Bastion and it is a blast. Reminds me of action RPGs from the SNES, only with better quality music and an oh-so-smooth voiced narrator. Already six hours in and can't get enough.

I agree with Stinging Velvet's assessment. This is a case of the game designer deliberately being a dickhead by setting a bunch of "haha. Killed you." traps. It often forces you to die to learn what not to do the next time, and that's how many of the game's puzzles are solved.

To the game's credit, the atmosphere is remarkably shadowy and dark, yet oddly fully of child-like imagination. And when the puzzles were solveable by intuiting what horrible thing was about to happen to you before it actually happened to you, the game was actually fun to play. But most of the time it's just a matter of move forward until you die, return to checkpoint, don't make the same mistake twice.

I actually like the trial-by-death approach. The savepoints are so generous that it doesn't feel excessive (like when you forget to save in a Sierra advenutre).

Yes, many of the deaths are unfair, but I think that's the game's cheap way of building a macabre atmosphere (they don't want you to avoid some of the deaths as they are part of the experience).

I do admittedly think that platforming puzzles (walk/jump here, not there) are perfectly valid in a puzzle platformer like this.

Finished it yesterday.

I liked the gameplay, it never seemed too repetitive and there were a lot of interesting puzzle mechanics introduced over the course of the game to keep things fresh.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere, probably the best atmosphere I've found in any game.

The 'story' was unfortunate though; it seemed far too vague to really be compelling. And if it wasn't for the description on Steam, it would be almost impossible to discern that he was looking for his sister.

Overall I thought it was a grim little gem of a puzzle-platformer.

This was actually a day one purchase for me on XBLA. I played it, liked it and got me interested in playing platformers again. For that alone, considering I hadn't played one since I was a pre teen, it deserves some kind of praise.

(Actually, I lied. I played and enjoyed Shadow Complex and the Rush 'n' Attack remakes as well.) Oh...and SOTN, although I file those under games that aren't so much about the platforming as the action.

Got this game on steam during its current sale, finished it today (2 sittings in total). I will add my vote to the "extremely overrated (yet still good)" faction. In short: Too easy, too short, not much story or gameplay, but good atmosphere.

More details:

The obvious strength of Limbo is its atmosphere. I really liked the art design, it deserves praise here. I'm a bit more critical about the sound: the sound effects are good, but the lack of any form of background music (for the most part) made me feel more detached, and I pretty much ran through the first half. My main motivation for firing it up again today was the knowledge that it would not take very long, so I could move it to my "completed" category. Thankfully, the second half was somewhat more challenging than the first.

However, apart from the atmosphere, there is not much to enjoy: The story consists of some vague hints at the end (vagueness can certainly contribute to the story, but there was so little in Limbo that I just thought "meh" and left it at that). The gameplay is minimalistic - which is not necessarily bad, but in this case, I found most of it trivial (this includes puzzles and platforming, especially during the first half of the game; steam shows 2.8hrs playtime in total, and I don't feel like replaying it (at least not anytime soon) ). There were only few exceptions that I thought were clever puzzles or simply neat applications of some principle.

As the stomper puzzle has been mentioned quite a few times: I tried jumping on the button the first time, and then already expected things to be reversed the second time. Like some others, I found this to be rather lame design (and the part about luring your followers into the stompers falls into the "trivial" category).

In total, I enjoyed Limbo, but I really don't understand the metacritic score of 89 (I would have given it about 80, I guess. Atmosphere alone just doesn't cut it for me). And it has nothing on Braid, in my eyes ;)

Looking forward to playing it, just bought before the sale ended, however the game did not appear in my Library. :-/