Reddit reviews 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die

Thanks! :)

So the book is available here if you're interested. Someone has uploaded the list of games here if you just want to see what games are in the book. I also actually have a website letsplay1001.com as an alternative place to keep track of the games I've played but it's been hard to keep the YT series up and keep the website up to date (and admittedly it's a little out of date right now).

Your criticisms are valid; Limbo was a puzzle game with few mechanics and limited player engagement. Compared to other puzzle titles it is lacking (it's no Portal, for sure); compared to other games released in 2010, it is not involving. Limbo is a short experience (two to five hours), and it's exceptionally short for the money ($15 on release). Your criticism reminds me of Will Freeman's review in The Guardian, where he calls the game a "traditional platform-jumping puzzle title" and notes "much of its brilliance is the work of smoke and mirrors".

Yet I think the criticisms are only touching on part of what made Limbo an interesting experience.

The limited mechanics and world interactivity reminded me of Another World (or Out Of This World, depending). Playing Limbo took me back a step to several games of yesteryear, reminded me of them, and showed me what an experience like that could be like remodeled in a new engine.

I thought the grayscale presentation was a striking choice, given how graphically-driven modern games tend to be. I liked the minimalist feel of the environment, and I thought the game did a good job of establishing and sticking to the tone set by the art. The game feels very, very lonely, as though the boy is trapped between worlds, much as the title would suggest.

The use of lighting was key; when you're working in grays all you really have is light and shadow, so you've got to make the most of it. There's a scene where you're holding on to a bug that's trying to fly up towards the light, but the leg you're on breaks, trapping you once again; later, when you encounter the spinning blades, lighting reflects them at massive size in shadows behind you, making them seem even more fearsome and lethal than they already are. I thought this was very nicely done.

I thought the sound design was spot on, from the gentle sounds of wind or water, to the more rumbling background tone that sets in when you first encounter the stabbing arms of the spider-creature. Sound also really made the "HOTEL" sign scene for me, as you can hear and see electrical transformers exploding as you try to cross the letters. This does a great job of adding to the tension.

In terms of story, the game gives you nothing to speak of; there were some promotional materials that read "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo" - but that's it. The game doesn't otherwise explain itself. As I played I felt the journey was the important and transformative element, more so than any "reward" at the end, and I felt that way right up until the final shot.

As an older human, I've attended my share of funerals. I've lost family over the years. I'm dreading when I first lose a friend or lover, and I can't even consider how I'd feel to lose a parent, let alone a sibling that I've known since they were born. I do know each loss takes part of me with them - the dead keep the parts of me I've given to them.

I had felt like the boy was already dead early into the game, but when you get to the final scene, and she's there - there's this pause, and the boy does not approach. What can you say? You've come all this way; are you even sure this is what you want? Did you make this trip because you were unable to come to terms with your loss, unable to achieve peace? How did the boy even start this journey? There's a visual of the boy breaking to pieces as you go through the final jump -- was this emblematic of his heart shattering when his sister died? Does his literal falling to pieces give us his reason for being here?

The last scene takes place in the same sort of forest as the opening. Post-credits, if you watch all the way through, the background remains on the same shot - though no bodies are present, and we can hear the buzzing of flies. Did the sister die there? Did the brother die there? Did he kill himself in an effort to find her, to be reunited? There's room for speculation and interpretation.

I thought quite a bit about the end of Limbo, and about death, and about family. I had a strong emotional response to the work; I found it impactful, meaningful. The game teased quite a lot out of me - I'm over 4,200 characters into my reply and I feel like I could still go on at some length.

Not bad for a two-hour title.

I measure Limbo's "goodness" by the impact it had on me, and how often I thought of it, or of how I still think of it, so I've no doubts at all - it is a good game.

But I'm evaluating by a different set of criteria than the mechanical, too.

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One extra thought.

There's a pretty fine read out there called "1,001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die". It covers video games from the late 1970s up through very early 2010. Snippets about each title were written by a battery of reviewers, many of them British (allowing access to perspective on titles that might not have made it across the pond, such as PC titles released only on the ZX Sinclair and the like).

When they chose to include a game it was because something about the title was unique, special, innovative, or trend-setting. In some cases they might add a second or third title in a series while skipping the original; in others, they add obscure games I'd never heard of, though I consider myself well versed.

Point is, part of their consideration includes the time and place in which a title existed. As an example, Asteroids (1979) was an important title in gaming history, a landmark title for its era, though almost no aspect of it holds up today.

Limbo may be something of that order. When it was released in 2010 it was a special sort of title. It reached 3rd overall on XBLA that year. (The top two were a little more conventional; Dead Rising 2 took the #1 spot, and Trials HD had #2. #4 went to another indie darling - Castle Crashers.)

Despite the short runtime and relatively high launch price, Limbo connected with a great many people. And it got a whole lot of words out of me on an otherwise sleepy Tuesday morning, nearly six years after it's release.

Limbo was a good game.

Try this book as a checklist.

BTW, I have you RES tagged as "Dies happy"

something like This?

You might want to check out this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0789320908/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&sr=&qid=

Rather than just listing my favourites, I would like to point you to 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.

After a long time of video game abstinence it helped me to get back on track. If I now start a project I use it to research similar games of the genre. Although not quite up to date anymore (~2010) it is a great place to get started ...

At one point in time I wanted to play all the games in this book: https://www.amazon.com/1001-Video-Games-Must-Before/dp/0789320908

It came back to my mind after browsing through 1001 Videogames You Must Play Before You Die, or rather this interactive list. I don't have a warm spot for JRPGs as a genre since they seem so very grindy and prone to excessive length and my standards for video game narratives have only gone up, but probably I have space for one good JPRG still.