Hideo Kojima’s favorite game from the past five years has been revealed. Unlike what some of you might expect, the creator of Death Stranding isn’t inclined to games boasting colossal production budgets or pyrotechnics, instead opting for creations with more substance. And that game is Playdead’s Inside from 2016.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Kojima revealed that some of his all-time favorites are “Super Mario Bros., Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (The Portopia Serial Murder Case), XEVIOUS and Outer World (Another World in Japan).” Kojima added that the game he likes most “from the past five years is Inside.”
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Inside is a bleak indie adventure with puzzle and platforming elements. It is the acclaimed game that serves as a spiritual follow-up to the moody platformer Limbo. These are the only two games so far by Danish developer Playdead, but the studio has a third game in the works.
It’s easy to understand why Kojima likes Inside so much. This is an obscure, melancholic and incredibly stylish game, set in a pale world where no words are ever uttered. There is no context whatsoever to it, apart from what you, the player, learns through his actions and exploration. It’s got an ambiguous ending that is open to interpretation and that bizarre journey of the small boy is one that players will likely remember for a long time. Kojima surely isn’t going to forget it anytime soon.
Playdead is breaking up with the past for its third game, using a full 3D landscape for the player to explore. The few pieces of concept art seem to hint at a sci-fi game where the player is an astronaut stranded on an arid planet.
He also talked about another on of his favorite games called Another World, which is also known as Outer World or Out of This World in some regions. The cinematic adventure game created by Éric Chahi for Delphine Software in 1991 was widely acclaimed, and Kojima’s latest favorite could almost be described as an evolution of that concept.