Recent reviews by Sakahira

Once again, a Half-Life game has shown the true power of its medium. This time, it's VR's turn. Everything from the intricately detailed world, groundbreaking character animation, finely-tuned combat - you get the point - has been refined to levels far beyond anything we've ever seen in VR. And that's not even mentioning the fast-growing modding community, or the huge reveals for existing Half-Life fans. The new consoles might bring the next generation of traditional games, but the next generation of VR is already here - spearheaded by none other than Valve themselves.

Purchased May 2018.
Better than ever, even though it's no longer sold. Supports PC, Steam Link, Android, iPhone, and iPad (via Steam Link app). I use the same controller to play the same games on my phone over mobile Internet that I do when sitting at my desk - Steam Controller + Steam Link is a killer combo.

The main draw of the controller is that every possible input can be programmed and chained to create incredibly intricate control schemes. Want chat macros for a raid? Done. Hell, want to play an MMO on a controller, with full hotbar and UI access? It'll take a bit of setup work, but the Steam Controller is more than up to the job. I've seen people play everything from World of Warcraft to Starcraft II to DOOM on this thing, and it handles them all better than you might think.

I've been using this controller to play PSO2 JP for years, and I'm actually faster than I would be on a keyboard and mouse. Hold a grip button and tap the trackpads to open menus, click one trackpad to swap to a different element weapon (important for Luster, one of the classes I play), click the other to activate hotbar items, hold the other grip button to use chat macros - all without lifting a finger from my regular position.

Yes, it has a learning curve, but once you're familiar with the Steam Controller, nothing else competes with the number of games you can play well with it. Add Steam Link on your phone for the best way to play nearly any PC game on a mobile device.

Updated for SteamVR 1.10

SteamVR has one major advantage that will win over most people: it supports all current (and likely future) VR headsets. No matter your headset of choice, you never need to re-buy your games on a new platform. This alone makes me prefer SteamVR despite its sometimes lacking features elsewhere.

It's far from perfect, though. Historically it's had input issues with some headsets, but my only issue with SteamVR is the in-game overlay/dashboard. As a Rift S user, Oculus Dash feels much nicer to interact with, lets me easily reposition the dashboard in 3D space, and lets me pull individual desktop windows into VR and interact with them separately. SteamVR has none of this.

As of SteamVR 1.10, the overlay has been redesigned and is now much nicer to use. However, not all features are available yet. For those, the entirety of Steam Big Picture is still available in VR, which works quite well thanks to its controller-centric design.

I still find myself using Oculus Dash even when in a SteamVR game because of those missing features, but the great thing about this is that SteamVR allows me to do that. I can press the menu button on my left Touch controller to bring up SteamVR, or I can press the Oculus button on my right controller for Oculus Dash. That alone deserves praise.

Feels like an evolution of the old Windows Dreamscene, being able to create full 3D scenes with a built-in editor and full Workshop support. A note about performance: the app puts a low but consistent load on your GPU. If you're seeing high GPU usage, check your clock speed. Your GPU might be running at a lower frequency, thus Wallpaper Engine takes more of the available power. This is not a bad thing - your GPU is saving power and will boost back up when needed.

Synergy is one of those little Source mods that can really add a lot of replayability to Half-Life 2. Synergy is simple in what it does - you can play through Half-Life 2 with up to 4(?) friends, but tweaking the maxplayers cvar lets you go up to 16.

But that's not all for Synergy. The community have created all sorts of maps for this little mod, most of them being incredibly difficult co-op minigames or objective maps. There are also physics-based puzzle maps where you have your wits and your gravity gun to complete usually around 20 puzzles per map. All of these custom map types are very fun to play, and take Synergy from a co-op Half-Life 2 experience to virtually it's own game.

Unfortunately, Synergy hasn't aged well - the server list is very sparsely populated, and there are only a few servers remaining that have any sort of active player base.

With that said, if you can get a group of friends together and grab some of the custom-made coop maps, you can have a blast with Synergy. (Quite litteraly, friendly fire is a thing that is toggleable)

While not what people were expecting from a sequel to Quake, it still keeps to the Quake roots, and I enjoyed it very much.

Quake II adds an actual storyline to the Quake series. In this game, you're fighting against the Strogg, once again all by yourself. The levels are objective-based, however they still play pretty much the same as original Quake levels, but less maze-like for the most part. This may put some people off.

The game has been given a complete graphical overhaul; more or less every texture and model in the game has been completely remade to fit the look of Quake II.

I would write more, but I haven't played this game in a long time and my memory of it isn't too good. What I will say, though, is that it's still a fantastic shooter well worth your time. It's not what you were expecting, but it's a good game in it's own right.
Oh, and yes, multiplayer is still there in all it's glory, but it still uses the direct IP method of the original so you must scavenge the internet once more for servers that are still alive

I don't even know where to start. A true classic game, published by the one and only iD. Set in an alternative version of World War 2, you play Agent Blastovich (hope I got that right) as you chase down Hitler's plans in this so-called "Operation Resurrection". A ton of levels, even more secrets and brilliant gameplay, all done in the Quake 3 engine. This game was released in 2002, so get past the dated graphics and engine, and you've got yourself a game you won't soon regret buying! It's such a shame iD had to kill the master server for RtCW. If you want to play it multiplayer, go grab the free Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. It's the multiplayer from RtCW spiced up and released as its own game