I just finished inside and wanted to see how people felt about it in 2023. Everything I’ve read about it around 2016-2017 seems to regard it as the best game of the year and in some cases one of the best of all time. It’s this truly still the consensus?
Really interesting and cool. I enjoyed my time, though it’s a short game. Game of the year… I dunno about that though lol. It wasn’t life changing or anything.
For me it was amazing. I felt that the 2.5 D was the best implementation of this type of mechanic I had ever seen. The way stuff from behind the environment comes into the 2D plain and interacts with the player is awesome. Extremely polished, very well animated, amazing visual tone, great atmosphere. Great semi scripted sequences, fantastic setpieces and (for me) an incredible ending (though disturbing).
INSIDE was easier than LIMBO, but a worthy spiritual successor. Very good in the genres of puzzle platformer and horror. No cheap tricks, just good work all the way through.
The story is VERY open ended, and I felt a little slighted at first, but it grew on me. As far as very open ended stories, so was LIMBO's.
Really? I feel like 90% of it was just plowing ahead to realize what something does because the game wasn’t clear in the answer. Like I’m inside death is required to figure out what you need to do. Even if it’s not death it’s going forward, pressing a button, realizing you aren’t supposed to press the button and going back to press it again.
Honestly the biggest issue is the player verbs aren’t clear. There was one point that you have to hide behind a box but the game has never had that mechanic so you have no clue you can even do it. The game will respawn you hiding behind the box to explain the mechanic to you. So that’s essentially one place of forced death but there are dozens of examples of information you get the best after death.
I’m going to be the voice of dissension. I absolutely adored Limbo and bought Inside day one solely because of it. But Inside just didn’t hook me like Limbo did. Inside was perfectly fine but I never gave it a second thought once I finished it, unlike Limbo.
I agree to be honest. Limbo seemed very touching and impact in its story. With inside the biggest argument I’ve seen is that the story is about individualism and working together but honestly, it didn’t feel like the story delivered the impact of the narrative as well as it could. Specially since losing your individuality was the best gameplay of the game.
INSIDE was cool and I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t say it’s a game of the year by long shot. Although I guess that depends on what else was released in the year of 2016. For me it was a better experience than most AAA games, at least.
To put it in perspective, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was also in 2016 and also won a lot of Game of the Year awards. Other contenders are Hitman 2016, Overwatch, Doom, Firewatch, Dark Souls 3, The Witness, and Superhot.
I thought it was great, and I’m glad I have only picked it up recently. Games like Inside are the reason why I think comparing games only makes sense to a limited degree. It’s a great game, very inquire, soooo enjoyable. But it’s also short, and that’s probably a good thing? Is it better than TOTK? I wouldn’t even know where to start on that question. It’s not worse, it’s just different.
The same conversation Limbo started to kick off when they released that back in the day. Quite short, but when you enjoy each moment that much, how can you attempt to assign a dollar to hour value? You just can't always diminish it to something that simple.
In terms of saying whether it's "the best of all time", well, it could certainly be one of the best of all time, but you really can't put it in front of or beside games doing radically different things. Youd have to start making a few wide umbrellas of games to place together and then rank them from there. Perhaps something like Unravel would be more comparable with something like Inside or Limbo.
I liked the story, it really drove the game forward but the gameplay was repetitive fast. I got old of it far quicker than I did when I played limbo.
Comparing games is like comparing movies. I think for the most part it works when you compare segments and styles rather than just whole games. Like I felt portal while also a short one mechanic game, that mechanic had a less tedious feeling towards the end. Probably due to the uniqueness of the mechanic at the time.
I’d argue it’s worse than TOTK. I completely get your point that they’re wildly different, but INSIDE doesn’t feel as overall “fun” to me at any point as BOTW or TOTK. I think there was only one real flaw with INSIDE; the way in which you solve puzzles can be sort of tedious. One thing I really liked about The Witness was that, despite the fact that some things were hidden or convoluted, it was rarely a stupid long walk just to complete the puzzle. INSIDE featured that a number of times. Sometimes the puzzle’s solution was obvious, but I was still running around for minutes just doing the legwork. I feel there should be instant gratification for the puzzle’s solutions, sometimes solving them didn’t even feel good because I had spent too long trying to actually get the game to recognize I had completed the puzzle even though I had figured it out
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