Recent reviews by Nacimota

Short, but sweet. Very charming and funny. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of the cute visual aesthetic with the gritty, straight vocal performance of the main character. Played the entire thing on the Steam Deck with no issues.

A decent little hidden objects game which you will probably enjoy if you like both cats and hidden object games. There are some minor irritations, like its refusal to run in full-screen on any monitor other than my secondary, and the fact that you only get one hint per level which also appears to be useless if you happen to use it in the wrong room. These are mostly nitpicks though and I largely enjoyed my time with this game.

A charming little puzzle game with a simple but creative mechanic. If you're looking for something relaxing and not overly challenging, I can recommend.

One of the best - if not *the* best - VR games available. As a Half-Life fan, I may be biased, but if you have VR you owe it to yourself to play this game. This was also the game that finally convinced me to buy a VR headset in the first place.

The art direction of INSIDE (not just the visuals but also the sound design) is fantastic. This game is dripping with atmosphere. If you enjoyed LIMBO, you should definitely play INSIDE.

If you're a big fan of Half-Life 2 and/or you have an eye for detail, the differences between this update and the original game are definitely noticeable. Interior lighting in particular is hugely different in some places, having been relit with radiosity from natural light sources (such as windows), rather than the fake invisible light sources that were used to approximate natural lighting in the original game. I actually think the lighting could use a little more work, but as it stands it's definitely a significant improvement.

I've noticed several bugs/exploits from the original game have been fixed, and while I've heard reports of new bugs and crashes in this mod, I haven't experienced any myself after playing it for several hours straight.

The commentary is well-spoken and very insightful, although if you're a hardcore fan, you probably won't learn much that isn't already covered in existing resources (such as the excellent behind-the-scenes book, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar). If you are interested in learning about the design process that drove the development of Half-Life 2, then it's definitely worth listening to (as are the official developer commentaries for Episode 1 and 2).

Overall, this is a pretty good update as long as you don't go into it with the expectation of an HD remaster (which it is not intended to be). Unlike other modifications such as the highly controversial Cinematic Mod by FakeFactory, Half-Life 2: Update is extremely restrained in its attempt to improve the game's visuals, with the goal of perfectly preserving the visual design and gameplay experience of Half-Life 2.