In both of these cases, you're trying to break these games down mechanically and as a result missing the point by miles. To even compare Limbo to Splosion Man like they're comparable games shows you're just being to analytical. Most people approaching games now aren't judging them in terms of genre conventions, they're just looking at how these games make them feel, which is really how games are meant to judged in the first place. It isn't ignorance, it's just perspective.
They might both be platform games, but clearly they are designed to evoke very different feelings from the player. Limbo is visually stunning, just as a work of art and animation, a sort of Yuri Norstein-meets-Lotte Reiniger project. Mechanically, it's threadbare, and yet the designers manage to create a wide variety of environmental puzzles that mesh nicely with the world. In its own way it's very immersive in that regard.
I hate to fall back on the word "experience", because it's become trite, but that really is what it comes down to; It's about how these games make you feel, and the mechanics are part of that, but you can't isolate them from the whole thing. Games are more than just what buttons do what and how the character moves, and suggesting Splosion Man as an alternative to Limbo is like going up to someone watching an Alexander Petrov cartoon and telling him to watch Shrek instead.
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