Recent reviews by Sierra

This game is basically crack cocaine tuned into a video game.

Essentially, this game is poker, but you have special "Joker" cards that allow you to gain multipliers and swing the odds in your favour in various ways. You will lose a lot. You will keep playing. This is it. Most gamblers quit before they win it big, but you're not a quitter, are you?

There are various decks that change what you have in your hand at the start, or give their own bonuses/penalties. Winning on a deck can unlock a new deck and there are various unlockables throughout the game that keep it feeling fresh and each run feeling different.

Also Jimbo the funny lil guy who talks to you throughout the game is my son and I love him, he is my baby boy and you have to buy this game for him.

Now you too can be an exploited minimum wage fast-food worker from the comfort of your own home.

Played this all in one sitting and it took 6-7 hours, but it might be a few hours longer for you as I am a quick reader.

Citizen Sleeper is a light CRPG that has a presentation quite similar to Disco Elysium. You have to manage your time in each cycle whilst making enough money to be able to sustain yourself and react to changing circumstances. The Eye is full of an array of characters to meet with their own interesting stories and motivations to meet as you strive towards various goals.

In terms of gameplay, there isn't too much to speak of. This is where the comparison to Disco Elysium is apt as the game is presented in the form of utilising your skills and making choices through dialogue and having the story delivered to you through text. It's not nearly as complicated as Disco Elysium and this game is much smaller in scope, but that is not a bad thing.

Outside of that, I found the writing to be engaging, complimented with good visuals and some great music/sound design that compliments the immersive experience of the game.

Yeah, I like the game. You should buy it. It's good.

More Stanley Parable? Yes, please. The old game and more!

See you in 10 years, Cookie9.

Charming little indie game about doing crime. Beat it in about 3 hours, so it is short, but sweet! I am a quick reader, so it may take most people 4 or so hours.

Great writing, great music, and it is generally just pretty silly fun. Would recommend it to anyone!

It's Cookie Clicker. You click a cookie. Number get big.

You know what this is.

Wow...what a game. Many other people have made this comparison as well, but I think it is certainly accurate to say that this is a combination of 7 and 4. Capcom knows their survival horror and they've certainly been on an uptrend with the quality of their games ever since 7 came out, so if you enjoyed that game and/or the recent remakes, you really should try this game.

If you're a newcomer, you might not get some parts of the story, especially towards the latter part of the game. That being said, the game still stands up well enough on its own and I would recommend it for anyone.

I'm going to preface this review by saying that there have been a lot of technical issues reported by many people and I personally experienced some frequent crashes around the third Jail of this game. However, with the new beta patch applied, those issues seem to be resolved and I have had a crash free experience! So make sure you opt into the beta up until the patch goes live properly.

Also, this game does use Denuvo Anti-Temper, which is controversial for many reasons including proven performance impacts as seen by games that have had the middleware removed. Some people very much dislike Denuvo, so it's only fair to make sure you're aware that is is there in case that is something that would impact your purchase. In that case, you may wish to consider either not purchasing the game, or seeking out its PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch ports if you own those systems.

With that out of the way, I can talk about how I actually feel about the game itself.

Persona 5 Strikers is a spin off of...Persona 5, funnily enough. It's by Koei Tecmo, the developers of the Warriors games. I personally am not a fan of those games, so I was pretty relieved when I found that Strikers is actually not a Warriors game. While it shares some of the base components e.g. controlling a party of heroes fighting large groups of enemies, the similarities pretty much end there.

In terms of combat, the game is a lot more focused on keeping your party alive, managing your HP/SP, and taking advantage of your enemies' weaknesses to gain control over the battle. In that regard, those tactical elements make the game feel strangely a lot like a Persona game in execution even with the change to real time action combat. Like many of the other Persona games, you also visit the Velvet Room to acquire and fuse new Personas throughout the game to give you more powerful tools to deal with the enemies. Social links are not in this game, but are replaced with a 'bond' system where you gain points to spend on upgrades for your party by interacting with them, cooking new recipes, and completing requests.

The ways these mechanics compliment each other help to make this feel a lot different from other spin offs and make it feel much more like a companion to the main Persona games rather than just another cash grab. Added to this, this isn't another dancing game, or non-canon 'it was all a dream' type spin off, but an actual direct sequel to Persona 5. However, this does mean that the game will spoil the events of Persona 5. This makes this game kind of a strange choice to release considering that game is not on PC, but it was likely easier to port a game that was already in active development.

If you have only played the original Persona 5, you will not be spoiled for the events of Royal as this game started development before Royal. Atlus likely also did not share any of the new plot elements of the re-release with Koei Tecmo, so Royal is not referenced at all in this game.

I cannot recommend this game much if you're a newcomer to the series, but if you are a Persona fan that enjoyed the hell out of 5, this feels pretty much like more Persona 5. In terms of story, it does retread some elements from the previous game and lift some elements into the new story and many of the 'twists' of the game's story are pretty easy to see coming. If you've played other Persona games, or are just generally familiar with the tropes of these types of games, you'll see where the story is going pretty easily. That being said, it is still a well executed and enjoyable story even if predictable.

Lastly...the music. Yeah. This a Persona game. It's got pretty great music.

Why are you still reading this and not playing Persona 5 Strikers?!

I can't believe Valve made a video game. A real one. Valve's back baby!

For reference:
GPU: RTX 2070 Super
CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X
RAM: 16GB 3200mhz
Headset: Oculus Rift S

Anyway, for an actual review of the game:
This is more a survival horror game than an action shooter like the rest of the series and the usual physics based puzzles have been replaced with these strange hacking games where you rotate orbs around. These can be frustrating, but not too bad once you get the hang of them. Some of the ones in the later parts of the game are quite irritating and it is easy to accidentally let go of the puzzle, causing you to have to start again...This is absolutely my least favourite part of the game, but it's not bad enough to make me not recommend it.

Combat is fun and it's a surreal experience to be hiding, genuinely fearing for my life behind a car while I get gunned down by Combine. I felt always immersed into the world of Half-Life while playing, thanks to great environments, visuals and that classic Valve writing showing they've clearly not lost their touch. The AI isn't always the most intelligent and apparently have no concept of object object permanence as I apparently no longer exist to them if I close a door in their face.

Opening doors can be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare sometimes and there are a few other kind of janky parts that could be frustrating at times. In terms of performance, this game ran smoothly on high settings on my setup. There were a few hiccups in the later parts of the game where the framerate would tank only on loading, or if I opened the Oculus Home menu. The actual game itself ran well throughout.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Alyx. This is a solid VR game and I hope that Valve will once again be setting trends here, leading to many more fully-fledged video games in VR as opposed to the smaller experiences that tend to be released. I hope if anyone actually reads this review that it might be helpful to the small number of us with headsets who are still on the fence about this game to make a decision.

Stay safe everyone!

Wow, this is my favourite JoJo game, you get to play as DIO.