jazzylament

@bigsocrates:I was pretty okay with Inside, I did feel a little uncomfortable when you break through the wooden boards early in the submarine section, and you find yourself in that big vast expanse of water. But it's such a short section and you aren't really in danger, so I felt alright. The later parts of that are all indoor, and not in vast expanses, so I was fine, even though that mermaid was after you.

I had more trouble with SOMA, but since you are grounded, I was fine. It's just when they started introducing cliffs or made you look up that I went "nuh-uh".

@inresurrection: Yeah, that movie did not sound like a fun time...no problems with Jaws though, but that was closer to the beach mostly.

@csl316: I tried playing Ecco recently but yeah didn't really feel comfortable. I think back in the PS1 days it was worse because the draw distance wasn't great. I remember having trouble going into the water in Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters. Didn't help that when you blew up the Piranhas in the water, they would turn into skeletons, which I also had deep fear of as a child. Which is funny now because I play pretty much any horror game

@lawgamer: Played much of Sonic back in the day? Still the most awful swimming/drowning sequence I've played yet.

It makes me worried in general, in the sense that I keep hearing that people are having rather ironically unhealthy habits with regards to the game. But at the end of the day, those are their choices. Looking at it from a critical standpoint I can see that there is not much of a game here beyond the collection and repetition aspects, which pushes me away from engaging with it in the first place, and It's not really affecting me directly since my friends aren't playing it either, or if they are, they are not playing it when I'm with them. Because they are reasonable people and don't feel the need to always be playing a collection game :D So at the end of the day, let the people have their fun, for as long as it lasts.

It doooooes make me wonder, what if WWE made a similar game, except you were collecting wrestlers, then you would feed wrestlers to other wrestlers to make them more powerful. You would install your high powered wrestlers into your local Ring and...I need to make a few phone calls.

I was watching the quick look for Song of the Deep, and in a moment early on, Dan piloted the submarine up into some open water where there was nothing but blue save for a monstrous looking shark thing and immediately my skin started crawling. It's a rather awful sensation that I've had in games before (like Tomb Raider Underworld).

I'm fine with underwater levels where you can see the ground, or you are in a cave (Uncharted, for example), but open water where there's just blue, or even with just a few sea creatures floating around, my brain instantly goes "nope, nope, nope, this is NOT okay!". It made wonder, how prevalent is this sensation with people? Anyone else have this problem?

It's a self-contained puzzle and the ball is a collectible/reward. If you interact them all you will be able to do something special.

Ehhhh fiiiine, I'll change the title then. It looked really similar to me. Maybe I've been staring at boxes for too long. XD

@donutfever: I think I know which one you are talking...that would have been a pretty good minimalist one, or a reversible. Man, remember how good Doom's reversible was?

@grithor: Yeah, would have been nice to keep the font. Probably would have gotten in the way of the "Day One Edition" branding. They could have at least have the Japanese one as the reversible side. Unfortunately the reversible just looks like this:

Really? Central figure brandishing a weapon gazing to the left, supporting characters flanking in the back, and big ominous figure hovering in the background?

This is probably the biggest take away though:

A little to close for comfort, eh? I wish we were getting the japanese box art.

@wandrecanada:Yes, absolutely the part where the water was suddenly on the ceiling and housing the suspended body batteries is something that's still bothering me. I'm coming around to the idea that the drowning/injection scene in this kind of interpretation likely refers to internal struggle with mechanics and design philosophies that end up 'drowning' the game, before the birth of a new mechanic (breathing underwater, and the new puzzles that concept allows) revives it. May be a little on the nose, but consider that it is after that specific repetitive gameplay section of teasing the water creature into one side before moving to the other simply wasn't fun, and everything after the drowning sequence was far more interesting and unique than what came before. As shown with the Pig/Parasite segment (if we take my above interpretation as true), the game does seem to enjoy telling it's story via it's mechanics. Fun stuff.

@billcrystals: Mmmn, I dunno about that! I think you can definitely have a meta narrative that makes the entire journey impactful. I think Spec Ops: The Line is the best example of this, in still having a surface storyline that is easy to comprehend while being meaningful, and having the underlying meta narrative be the real slap on the cheek. Inside on the other hand doesn't quite reach those levels in my opinion. I've seen explanations that people have for the surface narrative, but it doesn't really do much for me. This game is really on working for me on this level, which is rather strange when I think about it. The majority of my enjoyment with this game came not from anything the game explicitly told me (which was the case with Spec Ops), but what I derived from understanding it. It's something that, if the Playdead came to me and said "Well Jazzy, that's all well n' good, but that's not what the game is about, it's about Socialism" or something, I wouldn't really know what to think...I guess I have a bit of a pseudo-Ouroboros relationship with this theory that I'm rather dependent on!

@dweezilx: To answer your question of whether the game was actually fun, I'd agree with you and say that, yes, Inside is not a fun game.

It is also a game that I can't stop recommending to people. Inside is a tense, convoluted, and evocative game, and it is not fun to play. There are sections in that game that demand repetition, trial and error, and really precise timing, and I really believe that all these mechanics tie into the core meaning of the game. Its not a game that tells you its story explicitly, but manages to surface it in nearly every gameplay moment and mechanic it uses. And absolutely, 100% it is okay for you to feel cheated by this as a player. Most gamers I imagine go into games and expect to have fun, as they should. But I think Inside, kinda like Spec Ops, is a rather meta experience in what it is trying to do that transcends what players expect from it. It's a bit of a shameless plug, but I've written a few words on how I think it succeeds in doing in a blog here that you may be interested in, if you are looking for meaning (though keep in mind that this will contain SPOILERS for the whole game and the secret ending): http://www.giantbomb.com/inside/3030-46558/forums/inside-and-its-parallels-to-game-development-spoil-1799412/#2

Here's one thing to consider though: The title screen explicitly says "Playdead's Inside"...interesting distinction, mmn? Compare that with how Limbo's titles screen said "Playdead Presents A Game By Arnt Jensen: Limbo".