I started playing LIMBO last night from Xbox Live and was immediately impressed with the art style.  It's a game that you can look at any screenshot and immediately tell what it is...to me that's huge.  The game is also very moody and not having read any reviews going in, I was unsure what to expect with each new area.  I died very early which I wasn't expecting, so from then on I was very apprehensive in my play style.

They managed to achieve something that is a dream of mine...ZERO tutorials.  Granted the control scheme is very simple, but they still did a fantastic job of using the game play and level design to let the player learn the controls on their own.  We still may be a long way from achieving this in much bigger games, but this is a great example to look at and build forward with.

Adversely, they do something that I generally preach hard against...teaching the player through death.  You will die a lot playing LIMBO, but they do a good job of making the deaths look interesting, have quick reloads, and you learn something important with each death that helps you proceed.  So, once I got my head wrapped around dying a lot it tended not to bother me very much and I just used it as a method for learning what to do next.

I'm really enjoying it so far and it seems like it's going to be a pretty short game over all.  It's interesting how my expectations for game length change drastically when I download a game from Xbox Live, I may have to delve into that more in a later post.