Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 months ago I think we’ve already been over it before, some time last year when I played Limbo. I’m not a huge fan of puzzle platformers in general so it starts as an uphill battle. There were one or two puzzles I liked (like the anti-gravity stuff was cool), but most I didn’t for various reasons. Most were either frustrating or forgettable. The liquid stuff was a bit overused. Towards the end it got a little too precision platformy and timed for my liking, some with really tight and unforgiving timing. Although I recognise that some people might enjoy that. Story wasn’t really anything either. It’s a cool mood and some decent looking scenes at times but apart from the graphics and art it almost felt like a browser game.
BurntWits@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Maybe, that sounds familiar.
By the sounds of it, you probably wouldn’t love Inside. You might like it a bit more than Limbo, but it’s got the same things you didn’t like about Limbo, which happen to be the reasons I love both games. The gameplay is basically just a different flavour but it’s quite similar, and it’s also very sparse on story, focusing more on atmosphere and vibes basically, which I actually really like, but it sounds like you don’t.the main focus is definitely on the environment, with everything else sort of on the back burner.
I mean, I love atmosphere to be clear. Several of my favourite games stand on the foundation of atmosphere, like STALKER, Cyberpunk, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Dishonored… Withering Rooms that I played recently was dripping with atmosphere, which is part of why I had trouble moving on from it.
Limbo does have good atmosphere but… its atmosphere is kind of one-note, like yeah it’s spooky shadows but that’s all there is. It’s neat, but it’s not really wowed me to the extent that it really elevated the game for me or anything. From what I’ve heard Inside has a bit more of a story to it, a which makes me hopeful I’ll like it better.
Artsy indie platformers can work for me, I really liked both GRIS and INMOST.
BurntWits@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
There is a bit more story in Inside but it’s still kind of on the back burner a bit. The main allure, at least for me, is the constant “what the fuck is happening here” I’m constantly asking myself whenever I enter a new area. At the end of the day, it’s a short game, it’s cheap to buy, and if you don’t like it you can always refund it on steam. By the time you’re two hours in, you’ll know by that point if you’ll like the rest of the game or not. Or if you’re really good at puzzle platformers you could probably even finish it within the refund window, though I wouldn’t recommend doing that.