izigame.me

Remember Roger Ebert? the film critic who repeatedly insisted that video games can never be art? Wish that guy was alive to play this art. Maybe, even if he was alive, he would not try Inside, or any other masterpieces given how blindly he and his fans hate games. Maybe he never played any good games, or he was one of those guys who never accept newer forms of media/ entertainment no matter how good they may be. Even if he did not consider any of the games of his time as being artistic, did he have a time machine to go to the future to make sure nothing “artistic” is going to come in the game industry to claim games can NEVER be art?
The atmospheric world of Inside lets the player try to guess what exactly is happening without any dialogue or narration. The puzzles in the game are great and it feels rewarding when you finally solve them. By the end of the game, you will have a lot of questions and you will try to piece together and arrive at some conclusions. Then, try to see theories by others on the internet that go in depth. You will be surprised how many different interpretations of the story can be found, which seem quite different from the one you thought of. It is like how people come up with different interpretations of a painting and try to guess what the painter tried to convey, except this is not a static picture, but an interactive and atmospheric world with great attention to detail. The puzzles tie to the story and give some hints as to what is happening rather than being placeholders. Both Inside and Playdead’s previous game Limbo are some of the many games that prove that video games can be art.