Inside
If you like to play on your iOS devices, there are many reasons to be happy these days. We’ve seen a streak of releases (some fake, but good) of games that have triumphed on other platforms, standalone games that we never thought we’d see on the iPhone or iPad. Or at least not in such a short time.
Today we’re going to take a closer look at one of those throws, inside.e. A title that our LifeExtra colleagues already consider «a new masterpiece», but it remains to be seen if it maintains that qualifier when it’s time to play it from an iPhone or iPad.
The best story is the one that is not told
INSIDE is one of those games in which the description in the App Store does not provide anything about the story, and is precisely an advantage. As soon as you start the game you dive into it, without even an introduction. You appear in the middle of a dreary, dark forest, escaping from someone who doesn’t want you any good or from far away.
«You don’t know who you are, you don’t know where you are, you don’t know what to go, you don’t know where you have to go or what you have to do, and you don’t know why they’re chasing you-
You don’t know where you are. You don’t know who you are. You don’t know what your intentions are, or where you have to go, or why there’s what it looks like by an organization of people looking for you with flashlights and dogs and getting shot tranquilizer darts as soon as they find you. Your only option is to move on, run away, overcome all the obstacles you encounter and seek a sense of the dystopian world around you yourself.
It’s this kind of game, the ones that make our minds work harder, the ones that get us to dive into a story that we don’t know or how it’s going to start or how it’s going to end. It happens in other great titles like Half-Life, Portal or LIMBO, where you directly start playing and you don’t even know how the protagonist you control is.
You have to imagine what that protagonist looks like, your imagination gets to work. Just as everyone imagines the personality of the mute Gordon Freeman as he prefers (and therefore we all like us at our convenience), in INSIDE you work unconsciously to shape a world in your head. The game has absolutely no dialogue. Zero words.
And that, together with the very grim atmosphere of the game, makes INSIDE a delight when you dedicate all your attention to it. It’s not one of those casual games you can play on the subway. INSIDE is a game to play quietly, dedicate a good time, preferably with headphones to be able to enjoy well its wonderful soundtrack that is as simple as it is disturbing in certain moments of tension of the game. Extra points if you play in a low-light or directly dark place.
Notable in gameplay, with some details to improve
Something that i was a little scared of with INSIDE on iOS is the gameplay. It’s not easy to create good controls for a game where you have to walk, run, jump, hide, swim and interact with objects of various sizes. Many end up putting a few buttons on the screen, regardless of how that degrades the experience. There are many great untapped classics like Metal Slug, whose gameplay is excellent on consoles and lousy on iOS.
With INSIDE, however, they’ve managed it pretty well. There are no buttons, you have to figure out how to move the protagonist. But it’s easy: lightly swipe a finger, wherever you want on the screen, to move in that direction. And the character’s own gestures already make you realize that there are objects to interact with. Very well resolved.
-The game load is unusually slow for an iOS app, but then INSIDE runs smoothly-
As for the visual and graphic quality of the game, he approves. It’s the same one we can see on consoles, although I’ve noticed that on some devices the game load is unusually slow for an iOS app. Luckily, it’s just the load. When the game starts there are no performance issues.
On an iPhone 7 and a fourth-generation Apple TV, the game looks great. But I have to say that the slightly blurry (and intentional) appearance of the game is somewhat exaggerated in a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, where you play watching it all very closely and you can’t help but see too much blur at certain times of the game. I guess on smaller screens you don’t notice that much.
All in all, INSIDE is one of those games worth buying. And its business model is excellent: you can start it for free and buy it if you see that you like it. You don’t blindly pay money. If you do it is 7.99 euros, a price that I do not hesitate for a moment to pay for this little gem. My sincere applause for the creators. One last warning: it’s not a game for kids. It contains scenes that are not at all suitable for them.
