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REVIEW: INSIDE (sWITCH, xBOX oNE, ps4, Ios - Switch version tested)

16/7/2018

10 Comments

 
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Inside is not a new game. It has been around a couple of years, but it has just draped itself onto the Nintendo Switch - and feels like a perfect fit for the system's handheld qualities.

I've been diving deep into the Switch's indie game crannies over the past couple of weeks. A lot of it has seen me catching up on games which have been available on other formats for a while, but also it has been about countering a degree of fatigue I've been feeling towards triple-A games.

I've had Detroit: Become Human sat next to my PS4 for ages now, and not been able to muster sufficient enthusiasm to play it. The joy of Indie games is that they're cheaper and shorter, but tend to be more authored, more personal - and stuffed with more ideas than most blockbusters.

Frequently, they offer as much worth, and similar gameplay values, to the best games I grew up playing. Albeit with the benefit of everything we've learned since. 

To be fair, Inside is not a tiny-budgeted game - it was created with the help of a $1 million grant from the Danish Film Institute (which also assisted Lars von Triers' controversial Nymphomaniac) - but it nevertheless feels like a singular vision. As, indeed, did its thematic predecessor Limbo.

The two games are similar in a lot of ways; they both have a dark, almost monochromatic, art style, both are physics-based platform/puzzle games, and both are unremittingly bleak. In many ways, they're an extension of games like Flashback and Another World; a mute protagonist finds himself in a strange and mysterious environment, where progress is made via repeated deaths, and the buildings are full of power buttons.

Inside, however, builds on everything that made Limbo so feted, while also pushing video game storytelling forwards in an incredibly brave fashion.
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FLEE WILLY
Inside has you playing as a small boy fleeing enigmatic captors. That's it as far as the overt telling of the plot goes.

You run on, and on, and on - avoiding torches and searchlights, tracker dogs and creatures who lurk in deep water. You run through forests and farms, factories and across rooftops. There's a lot of hiding in shadows, and a lot of getting your timing just right to avoid being exposed.

Controls are limited to jump and an action button, the latter being used to pull switches, move boxes, grab ropes and the like. You can't attack in a conventional sense; instead, you must use the environment around you to evade your pursuers. It's often a case of keeping an eye out for a subtly-hidden clue - something that's a slightly different colour to everything else - or wondering what you might do if this was really happening to you.

"Oh! If I lead this thing over here... then I might have enough time to get over there..."

​This relatively, and deceptively, simple set-up is nevertheless packed with ideas. Rarely does the game ever repeat itself, throwing new ways to play at you - at points, you can control multiple mindless drone-like figures, who mimic your own actions, and later you'll find yourself in a Musk-style miniature submarine, of the sort a "pedo guy" would disparage.

The whole experience will only last you a few hours, but I'd wager those hours are more satisfying and rewarding than an entire month spent on, I dunno, Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
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SOD OF WAR
Yes, Limbo is incredibly atmospheric, but it doesn't rely on atmosphere alone.

What it really achieves is in telling a story without overtly telling a story. There are no cutscenes, there's no dialogue, not even a single scene-setting title card giving you a precis of the story thus far.

Everything you need to know is contained within the animation, and the worlds you're running through. That old edict "Show don't tell" has never been more apt. It's a game which trusts that the player isn't an idiot, and gives just enough for there to be an emotional connection between player and character. The sense of the protagonist's vulnerability is what binds you to this game.

Video games are often about power fantasies; all overly-muscled, chest-beating, heroes, or bare-buttocked women with guns. Inside strips you of power, makes you vulnerable, and therefore when achieve your aims against the odds... it feels like a real victory. Your successes are that much richer than in a game where you're mowing down enemies with a machine gun.

Inside also highlights just how pompous and overstuffed many games are when it comes to narrative. Take the recent God of War. It received multiple plaudits for its story, but to me it just felt overblown, with its on-the-nose characterisation and pervasive foreboding. The gorgeous art design, and how epic everything felt, seemingly blinded players to how rote its story-telling actually was. 

In any great story, less is more. You allow the person you're experiencing the story to fill in the blanks. You never hand it to them on a plate. Yes, God of War had moments where it held back - Kratos could be a man of few words, and the occasional grunt or emotive facial animation could speak volumes - but I found the whole thing rather chilly and remote. I never engaged emotionally with it, and part of that is due to its reliance on cut-scenes - which immediately severed my emotional connection with the characters. It would change the game from being my story to a story I was being shown.

God of War - like so many games - is what people think storytelling is, when in reality proper storytelling is what Inside offers. More pertinently, it's a story that could only be told in a game; it never, not once, tries to be a movie. 

By being brave enough to be a video game, and by not coquettishly winking at Hollywood and  going "Is this what you want?", it tells one of the best stories in video games ever. Indeed, by almost not telling a story at all.

​SCORE: 9.931231393 out of 10.00001
10 Comments
Hamptonoid
16/7/2018 09:01:37 am

Spot on. Superb game, but that ending...whu???

Limbo possibly, slightly, edged it for me. But both fantastic. Have you tried little nightmares? Just couldn't get with that at all.

Reply
Col. Asdasd
16/7/2018 09:10:59 am

Well, I though Limbo was pretty great. Despite the story in that game ultimately not making any sense it surely laid on the atmosphere with a spatula. Kieron Gillen called it 'Rick Dangerous for goths' in one of the few times I can remember him being completely wrong about something.

When this came out I didn't feel the tug, but reading this has put it on my wishlist. Totally agree that games which give you a few great hours instead of a few dozen average ones are one of the best things about the indie revival.

I absolutely take your point about God of War and other moviegames. It seems like a lot of developers saw the problem of story bits in games only really existing as book-ends to the gameplay bits, and decided the solution was to have *really great* bookends, instead of trying to integrate the story and the gameplay together better.

Mind you it's difficult when you are talking about a AAA project with hundreds of workers and $100s of millions on the line. Indie games have an advantage here because the smaller scope allows them to be more experimental.

The point about 'disempowerment fantasies' is an interesting one. Mostly it's survival horror games that make use of it. There are other games that do it well, I think: the bits in Mirror's Edge where you get chased by the police for example. In a more abstract sense, No More Heroes struck me as sort of disempowerment fantasy, taking on the role of deadbeat otaku Travis, who lives out of a motel and has to get workaday jobs just to open up the next level.

And then there's Cart Life..

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Mark M
16/7/2018 09:37:00 am

Loved this game and now I think I'll have to play it again. Agree with Hamptonoid about the final part of the game/ending, though, it's all a bit odd - someone must have been smoking something.

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Dr. Budd Buttocks, MD
16/7/2018 10:19:15 am

Been meaning to get round to playing Inside for a while. These are the type of games I really seem to enjoy nowadays. I only just got round to playing Limbo a few months ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Perfectly paced and just the right length for someone with a waning attention span for games and who is finding less and less joy in pretty much everything.

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Mark M
16/7/2018 12:30:29 pm

I know how you feel - not sure if it's just an age thing! Sometimes I'll buy something in a sale, then I'll sit at the launch screen unable to muster the enthusiasm to launch it.

I'm playing much more casual stuff these days too. Sky Force Reloaded and Rayman Origins are the current favourites.

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Hamptonoid
16/7/2018 02:19:12 pm

I hear you, dude. If you liked limbo then you should like this. Also recommend Brothers for a short, engaging, impactful game.

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Mark M
18/7/2018 04:21:33 pm

+1 for Brothers. Fantastic game.

Chris
16/7/2018 12:51:23 pm

Reads like a 9.931231394

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Wet Ham
19/7/2018 09:35:08 pm

Totally agree. Loved this game. Easily one of the best things I've played in recent years.

You learn so much without once being told anything. Great stuff.

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Gaming Mill link
26/7/2018 02:04:40 pm

I bought this when it first game out and played it from beginning to the end in my first sitting. I can't remember the last time I was so taken in by a game. In fact, I'm going to re-install it again and give it another run through.

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