Now here me out, I like INSIDE, from Playdead, the same company that gave us Limbo. I only thought for the first few minutes or so that the game took place during the Holocaust. Now, when a game captures the intensity and fear of the Holocaust, but isn't about it, it's doing something scary good. The game starts of so much like a movie about the Holocaust with a young boy running in the dark and seeing people getting taken away. It was horrifying for me, horrifying good, it put me on edge, because now I was invested in this nameless kid and I wanted to know what was going on.
Something's wrong. Something's so very wrong. And not with the game's simple mechanic of jumping and going left or right, that's all you have to start with. No gun, no lasers, just the ability to time yourself to not get seen.
What's wrong is this scenario. Other people are wearing masks. There hunting people who aren't wearing masks and it looks like society has fallen. You're alone and trying to survive. There are no details. That's just the start of the game.
The eerie atmosphere and stark difference between light and dark doesn't help calm me down. The look Playdead has achieved makes me wonder if they watched movies or went through the grim photos of WWII and saw some horrible sights of the actual thing.
Puzzles, you have to solve them...or else. Just like Limbo you have some clever puzzles to solve with timing and placing certain items and just interacting with the environment. Hats off again to Playdead for making a game that has you doing so much, with so little moves by your character. Just jump and interact and that's it.
Something worse, in that this invasion or control of people might not even be from man. I'm finding a lot of dead animals, oh, and that head gear that let's me control others. I don't remember being able to do that in any war movie. To add to the gameplay and give yourself some more arms and legs there are control helmets around that let you control people. This adds a new level to puzzles as you have to figure how having more people at your command can help you. It also begs the question, what the Hell is going on?
INSIDE is a game you play late at night and alone to get the spookiest of experiences. It scares me. It scares me in a good way. With realistic overtones to whatever the Hell is happening it's a game hard to pass up when it freaks you out so well.
INSIDE is on Steam and Xbox One