playing INSIDE (2016) after playing LIMBO (2010) just felt like the logical next step here. it was difficult to write a concise and spoiler‐free review for INSIDE given how much is packed into its runtime, but i still did my best:
unsurprisingly, INSIDE is basically “what if LIMBO was actually great” (maybe read my review of that first?). the way it accomplished this still surprised me.INSIDE is not just a little boy death simulator, to say the least. the way the character is portrayed has actual depth and personality, so you can actually relate to and understand him, as opposed to him feeling like a cartoony caricature. he actually reacts the world around him in meaningful ways, and death is no longer cutesy and funny to watch, instead becoming something gruesome you’d always rather avoid. INSIDE’s world isn’t photorealistic, to be sure, but the stellar animation and sound design are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, being much more effective for much less work. so i think it’s a good graphical sweet spot. your character not having a rendered face doesn’t detract from this in practice, trust me. i desperately hoped i could find some food somewhere and get a 3 minute cutscene just to watch this little boy eat something for god’s sake.
this added humanity extends far beyond how the game renders its characters, too. the horror elements don’t just throw oversized mosquitoes and bear traps at you; it’s much less surface‐level than that. for instance, other humans were only adversaries for a little while in the earlier parts of LIMBO, and their motivations for killing you were quite unclear, but in INSIDE there are a lot more humans to be a lot more afraid of. INSIDE also reaches in deeper to pry at fears of unknowable. further bolstering the game’s impact is the fact that they actually had writers this time. the format of the experience is no different from LIMBO, but the contents within actually command a respectable amount of intrigue and mystery this time around. INSIDE doesn’t feel like it reaches as far into the fantastical as LIMBO did — there are no gigantic man‐eating spiders this time around, for instance — but the journey is also much wilder despite somehow feeling more grounded in reality. by the end of it you’ll look back at the very start of the journey and inevitably remark on how quaint the beginnings were.
the good aspects of LIMBO are all still here: this is a game anyone should be able to play and enjoy, as it’s still a reasonable length even doubled (now 2 evenings/movies instead of 1), and the controls and puzzles are engaging but still not very difficult for those with some gaming experience (though this time i only found half of the secrets). they also add a lot more elements and concepts for the puzzles to play around with, with the addition of 3D elements often playing a prominent role despite only having control over the character in a 2D plane.
narratively, the shift to 3D this sometimes causes a bit of dissonance where i look at something in the distance and think to myself, “why wouldn’t he want to go that way instead?” or “wouldn’t this puzzle be so much easier if i could just grab that thing from over there?” but this still doesn’t happen nearly as often as it could if they didn’t apparently make that a pretty consistent consideration in the environment design. the extra detail in the environment also seems to have motivated them to pull a Mirror’s Edge and highlight a bunch of interactable shit with red paint, which i think could easily have been done without given how linear the experience is, but maybe they reached this decision after much more playtesting and consideration than i’ve put in as a player.
the inclusion of a few of the puzzles, as well as the sheer size of a couple less‐major areas (making them need a lot of walking, particularly if it’s a puzzle you’re still figuring out the pieces for), still feel filler‐y to me — but that was also the case with LIMBO. this probably maxes out at 20% of the game content possibly being considered filler anyway, and that’s also just my personal perception.
use an OLED display to play this game if you can, as it will benefit a lot from lower black levels.
some more assorted thoughts containing spoilers are below the break.