Inside review – CNET

The Good Inside is a beautifully designed puzzle platforming game from Playdead, the studio that made Limbo. Its controls are seamless and it tells a wonderfully strange story.

The Bad You’ll just want more of Inside when it’s all said and done.

The Bottom Line Inside is a brilliant work of atmosphere that tells a twisted and engaging story. It’s smart, bizarre and one the finest gaming experiences of the year.

Available on Xbox Store:$19.99

Inside is the type of game I love showing people who aren’t aware that games can actually make you feel things.

That’s the brilliance of Inside, the sophomore effort from Danish developer Playdead, the team that brought us 2010’s Limbo. It’s a remarkably emotional trip through a quietly horrific world that is as fresh as it is unique.

If you in subscribe to the notion that videogames aren’t just about killing zombies and shooting soldiers, it’s your responsibility to give Inside a shot.

It’s been six years since Limbo creeped me out to the point where I couldn’t play it alone (or with the lights off) and Inside hits every single mark I hoped it would — and then some.

Playdead

Inside is a natural evolution of the themes and platforming of Limbo. The most satisfying part is seeing all of its predecessor’s nuances fleshed out and better realized. There’s a maturity in every element of Inside, from its wicked puzzle design to its brooding score.

It’s worth noting this isn’t a game for everyone. It’s dark, occasionally upsetting and downright macabre throughout. For me that’s part of its charm, but I can’t deny how brutal it can be.

Similar to that first reaction I felt to dying in Limbo, the first time you die in Inside might force you to let out a genuine gasp before the screen fades to black.

Your character, a faceless boy, follows a single line through a world that’s somewhere between two- and three-dimensional. He can’t interact with the fore and backgrounds, so he’s essentially stuck on a plane all the way through the game.

Playdead

Where Limbo felt like the whole thing was being shown through a dirty projector on the wall of an abandoned asylum, Inside has a cleaner look, opting for the striking visuals of a decrepit flooded industrial wasteland. Instead of black and white, Inside opts for shades of desaturated colors, but most of its bleak palette is made up of a variety of grays.

The camera follows the boy on a left to right adventure through a world that is isolating, oddly tranquil and cold. You’re not sure how you got there, but you quickly learn there are people in this place who don’t want you out and about, discovering their dark secrets of experimentation and control.