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I spent the first few hours of Inside thinking: sure, this is all fine, but it's hardly the spider, is it? That's the danger of making a follow-up to a game that has such a singular impact, I guess. In my memory, at least, when you're playing Limbo, when you're navigating that monochromatic dream world riddled with 2D platforming puzzles, you're either dealing with the spider or you're worrying about her coming back again. Inside's another near-monochromatic affair (although the understated use of dreary dawn colour is really excellent). It's set on a 2D plane once more and it's filled with all manner of platforming puzzles. Inside even has the same deft wit when it comes to delivering endless, crushing death after death after death, always with an appealing kind of bluntness. This is death as a full-stop: silent, definitive, dramatically non-dramatic. Death that says: that didn't work, so what now? And yet, no spider. No spider equivalent. No ersatz spider. What's Playdead up to?
Then, somewhere around the two hour mark, I realised I'd stopped thinking about the spider. Inside doesn't replace it - although the last 20 minutes of this are easily the most memorable 20 minutes of any video game I've played in an age. It's more that the craft and care on display start to lift Inside above the impact of any one set-piece. Well, until the final set-piece, that is, but let's say no more about that. No spoilers. And for once it's not even a spoiler to know that there's something waiting for you that might very well be spoiled by reading too much. Trust me: it's not like you're going to guess it this time.
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