Inside Reviews
It’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into what is presented to us as a game. The issue I keep coming back to is that none of it made any sense. None of it meant anything. If all of these disparate environments and puzzles could have been brought together along the way or at the end in a cohesive story, I would certainly give it a better score.
After playing Limbo and how good that was I never thought INSIDE would top it, boy was I wrong and this might one of my favorite games this year.
Inside is a game that people will be discussing and talking about what exactly happened for many years.
If you own an Xbox One, this is definitely a game you need to play within its life cycle. There are no questions about that, and don’t argue. Preferably sooner rather than later, unless you don’t care if you have it spoiled (don’t let it be spoiled, trust me). Whatever your tastes in games are, this should be on your list of games you need to beat before you die.
Playdead have taken everything that Limbo offered, and expanded it exponentially with Inside. Crafting a sublime 2D platformer with another unique art style, they take so many unexpected turns with the game that they may as well ship it with a sat nav. A game that starts you off as a boy in the wood will immediately draw comparisons to their 2010 debut, but the connective threads between Limbo and Inside are slowly pulled apart as the latter goes on and begins its descent into something all the more disturbing. A fantastic example of polishing a game until it’s done, Inside may only be around 4 hours long but it’s been well worth the 6 year wait.
INSIDE is an odyssey I recommend everyone, gamer or not, to undertake. When it’s all said and done, the game did feel a bit short, but every second is worth it. I haven’t felt so strongly towards an indie game story since Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and that’s saying a lot. After experiencing a monotonous world of where specs of dust in pale moonlight beauty in comparison to flakes of flesh wafting in the sunlight, the credits made me sit in the sun, reflect on myself and the progress of our world. It’s hard to discover any true answers in our world, much like the mysteries still left unsolved in INSIDE’s world of scientific genocide, but it’s easy to understand the massive effort it took Playdead to splice together this masterpiece.
It’s a game that’s not only very enjoyable to play, but one with enough mystery to it that it keeps you thinking inside the moment and out.
We went deep into the despair and desolation of Playdead's Inside and found it to be one of the finest examples of emergent narrative there are.