Questionable Games

In yet another case of me finally getting around to playing an old game, I blasted through Limbo via that triple pack I bought from GAME the other day. I knew it was a short game but I wasn't exactly expecting to finish it in one sitting - I wouldn't say I was disappointed with its length though. It didn't overstay its welcome and I can imagine it would be hard to keep up the pace and oppressive feel for much longer. It comes to a pretty ambiguous end and I feel a little disappointed at my lack of self control in terms of going looking for explanations of it straight away, rather than thinking on it a while longer to come to my own conclusions. Trying to recall what I initially thought, I had forgotten about the tiny bit of exposition that suggested he was looking for his sister, which is probably why it made very little sense. The cyclical nature of it and just the general vibe left me with no doubt that it wasn't supposed to be a happy ending.

No matter what the rest of the game represented, I never felt that any of it had as much of an impact as the opening section in the forest. I think it has to be the grimmest locale I have ever traversed in a video game, while at the same time being pretty scary as you are wondering if the spider will turn up again. It was also really the only part of the game that made me question what I was doing, whether it was leading others into the same traps that had killed you multiple times or how you finally deal with the spider. For some it might seem that you just had to do everything in your power to stay alive, others might have had difficulty in even thinking up some of the solutions. I felt like I was somewhere in the middle, in that I would think of the solutions quite quickly but then feel slightly guilty at the fact that my brain went there and wonder if there was another way around it.

I find games where you are forced to do things that make you feel uncomfortable to progress more disturbing in a way than those that feel like a free for all. For example, something that generated plenty of tabloid headlines at the time, being able to murder prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto to get your money back. I could always look at that and think that it might not have been intentional, you could have one guy coding the interactions with prostitutes and another who made any character drop all of their money on their death. To me the fault lies with the person who realised you could do this in the first place because hey - you can do the same thing in real life but that doesn't mean that you should. So when a game forces you to do something you are uncomfortable with, I don't go into full on 'ban this sick filth' mode but it's definitely interesting to think about.

Another game that had this kind of effect on me was Shadow of the Colossus. As that game progressed I certainly found myself questioning whether I was doing the right thing and I felt pretty bad at having to kill some of the more placid creatures but you carry on regardless because the game tells you to. That kind of turned out to be the point after all I think, that this character was blind to or ignoring any negative aspects to his objective. I wanted to bring this around to the question of "are Games art?", as although there are many different ways that you can define art (which is probably what causes so much conflict between different groups) one viewpoint is whether every part of it works towards the same goal or theme. This is difficult to achieve in games simply because they are usually primarily about entertainment, so the actual gameplay is likely to distract from the overall message the game might be trying to get across. I think that by forcing you down a specific path that you might not always feel comfortable with, games can get closer to that goal of keeping you focused on the theme and not just enjoy what you are doing.

I think that this is where the later half of Limbo falls down, as though you might not call it fun exactly, you can get more drawn into the puzzles and figuring out how to use the gravity devices to get through them. Some of the earlier sections as well as being disturbing are almost sadomasochistic, with the designer of the game setting up these harsh traps and you the player having a pretty good idea of what's likely to happen but still walking headlong into them. I'm sure I must have had a red mark on my forehead from the amount of times I had slapped it by the end. Seeing it through to the end felt more like a compulsion than an enjoyable experience. It's also an experience that I would imagine most will only take once or at least take a long break between playthroughs, unless you are in the mindset to find all of the secret achievements and complete the game without dying more than five times (good luck with that). If I never play it again I'm sure that it will always be filed away in my brain somewhere, to come back to think about now and again.