{"id":12926,"date":"2026-08-14T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=12926"},"modified":"2026-08-14T20:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T16:35:22","slug":"inside-is-the-closest-thing-to-a-perfect-game-ive-ever-played","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/08\/14\/inside-is-the-closest-thing-to-a-perfect-game-ive-ever-played\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Is the Closest Thing to a \u2018Perfect\u2019 Game I\u2019ve Ever Played"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains \u201cthe Xbox guy.\u201d In the run-up to Xbox\u2019s 25th anniversary, he\u2019ll be sharing his memories from the platform\u2019s first quarter-century. <\/em><\/p>\n

Inside. Holy shit. That\u2019s still the first thing that comes to mind when I think about that game. It has now been 10 years since it was released\u2026 as an Xbox exclusive. I expect most people probably don\u2019t remember this, but Inside was, for a brief few days in late June\/early July 2016, only available on Xbox One. It then released the following week on PC, but it would be almost two months until it arrived on PS4 at the end of August. <\/p>\n

While Inside was eventually available to play almost everywhere, it\u2019s worth remembering that it was the long-awaited follow-up to 2010\u2019s Limbo, itself one of the best games of the Xbox 360 era and<\/em> one of the defining games of the brilliant Xbox Live Arcade downloadable-game initiative. If you ask me what my favorite XBLA game ever is, my answer was and probably still is Limbo. It was that incredible a game. And so once the notoriously meticulous developer Playdead slowly chipped away at the follow-up \u2013 Inside wasn\u2019t even announced until E3 2014 \u2013 it took up permanent residence on my own personal Most Anticipated Games list. When it finally arrived in June of 2016, I jumped at the chance to review it for IGN. <\/p>\n

I knew it\u2019d be short \u2013 Limbo was roughly four hours long \u2013 but I didn\u2019t know how perfect <\/em>it would be. Yes, I know what you\u2019re thinking: there\u2019s no such thing as a perfect video game. It\u2019s a subjective work of commercial art. (And for the record, 10 out of 10 on the IGN review scale means \u201cmasterpiece,\u201d not \u201cperfect.\u201d) But right from the first jump, every frame of Inside seemed perfectly polished. There was nary a framerate hitch, animations seemed buttery smooth, sound design was impeccable, and every movement with the gamepad was precise and pristine.<\/p>\n

And then I got to the climactic portion of its dialogue-free story. It was, to put it mildly, unlike anything I\u2019d ever seen in a video game before: monstrous, curious, intriguing, and in a twisted way, delightful. It upended the mechanics of the final act while leaving plenty of unanswered questions floating in my mind. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the game of the year,\u201d Phil Spencer told me. And he was right.\u00a0\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been a decade and I still don\u2019t want to spoil that finale, because spoiling Inside for even just one person feels like a crime. But, at the risk of giving away a tiny piece of the mystery, I\u2019ll share this little-known fun fact: Inside is the only game I\u2019m aware of that has ever had a Collector\u2019s Edition (released well after the fact) made by a sex-doll company (warning: spoilers at that unboxing link). <\/p>\n

Inside was even shorter than Limbo \u2013 it took me about 3.5 hours to finish on my first playthrough. But it\u2019s still three and a half of the best hours I\u2019ve ever spent with a controller in my hands. It told an engaging story without a single line of dialogue, and its ending remains open for interpretation in that rare brilliant way where no theory about what Inside is trying to say is truly right or wrong. If you play it today, you\u2019ll find it hasn\u2019t aged a day. <\/p>\n

I can laugh now over the very first-world problem I had when I reviewed it: finishing it before it was available to the public and having absolutely no one to talk to about it for a few weeks. Well, almost no one. At E3 that year, I had a chat with then-Xbox boss Phil Spencer. He\u2019d finished it too, of course, and while there was still time to wait until Inside launched and a public consensus was arrived at, Spencer already knew it was more than special. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the game of the year,\u201d he told me. And he was right. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I voted for it in IGN\u2019s 2016 end-of-year awards. Sadly, Overwatch won out. I still <\/em>think it should\u2019ve been Inside.<\/p>\n

All of this is to say that Inside was a rare bright spot for Xbox in the otherwise-grim Xbox One era. Today, anyone can enjoy it, and if you haven\u2019t, please take this as my highest recommendation that you should. It won\u2019t take long, you won\u2019t regret it, and by sheer wonderful coincidence as I write this, it happens to be on sale on Steam (until August 16) for just $2.49. Yes, it\u2019s 90% off. It\u2019s almost <\/em>free!<\/p>\n

As for me, I\u2019m going to continue waiting patiently for Playdead\u2019s next game, which still hasn\u2019t even been officially announced, let alone released. There are other alternatives to waiting \u2013 Playdead\u2019s designer, Jeppe Carlsen, went on to create Coccon, and its co-founder, Dino Patti, produced 2022\u2019s Inside-ish Somerville. But if the six-year gap between Limbo and Inside proved anything, it\u2019s that whatever Playdead is cooking will be well worth the wait.<\/p>\n

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of IGN’s weekly Xbox show, <\/em>Podcast Unlocked, and a co-host of <\/em>Next-Gen Console Watch. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at <\/em>@DMC_Ryan.<\/em><\/p>\n

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