First off, I want to apologize to whoever I stole the Inside “cover art” for. Since it’s not a physical game, I guess they never bothered to create traditional cover art. The image on the Microsoft page is tiny, so I just had to grab one off the net that worked for the featured image. I can promise you with 100% honesty (and shame) that I’m not making any money off this, whatsoever. Okay, with that out of the way…
Inside goes down in history as the very first video game that ever made me ask “What the fuck did I just play?”
The game starts out mysterious and gets downright bizarre. I’m okay with weird, but I also like purpose. I like to know there’s a goal. With Inside, just like Limbo before it, I never knew where I was going or why. The only reason I pressed on was “because I’m supposed to.”
It’s a good thing that the game nails the atmosphere. It’s creepy and minimalist, but at the same time the lack of any kind of explanation was a bit of a buzzkill. I don’t need every little thing spelled out for me, but it is kind of nice to get some kind of thematic clue. What does “Inside” mean? Inside what? The only thing I’ve been able to gather is that maybe the kid that you play as is trying to get inside something. I guess by the end he does actually get inside… something, but I’m not sure that’s what they meant.
The game tells you nothing, and you’re no closer to knowing what the fuck is going on at the end than you are at the beginning. It’s clear that developer PlayDead knows how to nail atmosphere and they’ve got a pretty good handle on physics-based puzzles but I would love to see what they can do when telling an actual story. It doesn’t have to be narrated, or even have dialog, but damn, let there be some kind of cohesive element.
This game has gotten a lot of critical acclaim, and deservedly so. It definitely kept my interest for the entire playthrough, but I did feel like it dragged a little bit, especially since there was no sense of progression. The only time I got a sense that the game was near its end was in the actual end, when there was literally nowhere left to go. I kept expecting a big twist, especially since everyone that played the game was saying things like “that ending, wow!”
Well I got to the ending, but I definitely didn’t feel ‘wowed.’ I played the entire ending with a raised eyebrow. It was so much a feeling of awe as much as it was disbelief, not because the “twist” was so amazing but because it was so out-there. I give them a lot of credit for basically jumping off the deep end and doing whatever wacky shit they wanted to do, and sometimes stuff like that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. The movie Cabin in the Woods is a great example of when the wacky shit works. Inside is a good example of when it doesn’t quite get there.
I’m well aware that my opinion is in the minority. It seems like pretty much everyone loves this game. I liked it, but I didn’t love it, and I feel like the momentum that the ending sequence builds up comes dangerously close to being ruined by a couple of minor physics-based puzzles. In fact, they’re not even puzzles, it’s as straight-forward as “push a button.” The trick you have to push the button by throwing or pushing up an object. It’s fidgety and can take a few tries, which (to me) killed the momentum and spectacle of the grand finale.
I’m sure anyone that’s played it through is reading this and shaking their heads and telling me I didn’t “get it.” That’s fine, I don’t have to “get” things to enjoy them. I spent most of my angsty teenage years watching and enjoying artsy shit that I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand. But they were engaging, and so was Inside. And just like Inside, most of them had sucky endings.
