John: But that's the point! The whole game is about being controlled, about the mindlessness of going from left to right at any cost, for no purpose. You must be a fucking genius! I'm so impressed. Kieron: But even then, I'm left rolling my eyes and thinking "Well done - you have complete control of reality and have managed to make me do something stupid. Kieron: As an aside, I'll admit that Limbo does its best to sell the joke - that its deaths are so well done tries to transfer death to a moment of joy. You go, "Oh, you fucker!" And then you adapt. John: Because there's no embarrassment or humiliation here. Kieron: For a man who hates April Fools so much, it's an interesting argument to take. The game one-ups you, and so you're trying to get it back. They thought that killing you without warning was funny and did so with all the craft they could muster. It was how the designers thought games should be. And you're deeply underestimating Rick Dangerous - it wasn't incompetent. Something can be completely accomplished in what it's trying to do and still be rejected, because the philosophy the object expresses is vile.
It's like me saying you giving Magna Cum Laude 3% for its outrageous sexism was your problem, not the game’s. Kieron: Firstly, It's your problem not the game's," is a silly argument. Limbo is deliberate, and carefully timed. John: I'm amazed that a game fucking with you bothers you this much. John: Don't make me hit you with Barthes. John: No - all about the experience you're having. It's just Rick Dangerous with a different aesthetic. It's when it's because it's poorly thought through or badly made that it's an issue. If a game is deliberately designed to have the design be mocking you, that's a clever experience. John: This does seem to be your issue rather than the game's. It's a designer who finds that kind of thing funny. If you jump off it, you die, because you fall just too far. Kieron: Go to the first log and jump off it. John: I'm not aware of a point where you die in that way. Kieron: I sort of suspected I'd hate it from the second I jumped off the first log and it kills you for it. John: You're aware that's not an argument? John: It only comes in after you've started using dead bodies to walk on, caused people to be hanged to progress, etc. Kieron: It's a tosser of a designer laughing at you, every step of the way for being a fool. I'm recognising that it's deliberately forcing trial and error to change the atmosphere. Kieron: Total trial and error game with a dark, edgy aesthetic. Kieron: I should finish playing Limbo and do my evisceration of it. Whose side are you on? FIGHT! (This contains significant spoilers, folks.) An argument that can only be shared with the world. Having played and reviewed Limbo yesterday, John found himself at the end of Kieron's (particularly sweary) disagreement gun, and as is always the case the two of them argued about it.