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There’s a lot of considerations when it comes to gaming. What are you going to play? What will you play it on? How about peripherals, which do you plan on using? Perhaps most importantly, what brightly-colored drink are you going to wet your whistle with while you’re fragging noobatrons or however they put it these days? Soon you just might be sipping Sly, a new set of “circadian beverages” aiming to change the gaming beverage paradigm by offering a scientific approach to energy instead of just slamming fatigue away with caffeine. Lofty goals, indeed.
via YouTubeSly comes in three varieties – Sly BOOST (in Tropical and Berry flavors), Sly CHILL (in Mango and Citrus) and Sly DREAM (in Vanilla and Orange Cream). This drink’s claim to fame is the focus on nutrients and nootropic (chemicals that actually help) science to achieve the desired results rather than a more brute-force method of the sort you’d see from something like Monster. BOOST is packed with B Vitamins and such, while CHILL’s got the sort of thing you’d expect from tea like chamomile and DREAM’s got 2mg of melatonin to help you zonk out. I was able to give BOOST and CHILL a try.
The Testing (And Tasting)
In the interests of testing Sly’s efficacy scientifically, I…well, I drank some while playing video games. That’s what it’s for, right? I slurped down the Sly BOOST Tropical flavor while kicking Yakuza butt in Like A Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name, following that session up with a Sly CHILL Mango afterwards to ensure I was properly cooling down. The Dragon of Dojima doesn’t always operate at maximum power, after all. Think of it like the beverage equivalent of a karaoke session after a back-alley brawl.
The following day, while playing through Game of the Year contender and Bionic Commando homage Sanabi, I swung a Sly BOOST Berry into my gullet. After delving into the mysteries of Mago City, I pondered their implications over a Sly CHILL Citrus. The two beverages were like the two sides of Sanabi that makes it a rock-solid adventure: pulse-pounding action to take the tempo up and emotional storytelling to bring it back down.
I also determined that I’d need a couple of control sessions. For the first, I chugged a Strawberry C4 while playing Lords of the Fallen. This is, after all, the act of downing an energy drink while playing a Soulslike: an experience as fundamental to gaming as Doritos and Mountain Dew. The only way I could be any more connected to the videogame zeitgeist is if I were pressing F to pay respects, doing a goofy Fortnite dance or failing, repeatedly, to complete Cuphead‘s tutorial. I’m told video games are art, and this beverage made me a true connoisseur.
For the second control session I decided to see what would happen if I consumed something that would provide the opposite of energy, so I took some shots of Jose Cuervo tequila while playing Diablo IV. Along with confirming that energy drinks are useful supplements when it comes to gaming, I also hoped to find some sick loot. They say drunks are lucky, after all. They…do say that, right?
Oh, and I also played all of these a bit after the fact while just drinking water. Gotta be smart about your methodology, after all.
The Results
Let’s talk about the results. We’ll begin with the first control session. C4 tastes pretty good, it imparts a nice tingly feeling and it keeps you from falling asleep. These are all things I’d expect from energy drinks, and Lords of the Fallen is the sort of game where it helps to be awake and alert lest you end up shishkebab’d. I was able to progress to a new area, locate the checkpoint, and retain enough Vigor to level up, so all in all I’d consider this a success. My blood pressure may or may not agree.
In the second control session, the tequila made me feel relaxed, then lethargic as time passed and the shots racked up. Fortunately my character was a Frost-based Sorcerer, so I’d made Diablo IV as brain-dead to play as possible and ensured I wouldn’t die even if I was literally passed out on the keyboard. I can confirm that I was both very sleepy and very lucky by the time the session concluded, having gained a level and a half and found a unique set of pants.
What about the Sly, though? Well, first off, there’s the good: Sly’s taste is the headliner here. In particular, the Sly BOOST Tropical is absolutely fantastic. It’s the kind of liquid joy I’d like to have on the regular, maybe with a little bit of adult beverage mixed in here and there where appropriate. Think low-calorie Capri Sun and you’re vaguely in the ballpark, but it’s far better than that. The only flavor I didn’t fall in love with was the Sly CHILL Citrus, and that struck me as personal preference more than anything wrong with the drink. By and large, this stuff’s pretty delicious.
As for gaming performance, I can confirm I was able to make significant progress in both Like a Dragon Gaiden and Sanabi while under the influence of Sly BOOST. In fact, I’d suggest that for precision-focused games like Sanabi, Sly BOOST could very well be superior to traditional energy drinks that provide their juice via caffeine. This could easily be expanded to twitch shooters and the like, particularly if you’re focused on sniping and similarly delicate affairs. When you’re mashing buttons to mash faces in Yakuza, I suspect that caffeine could do just fine, but you’ll risk a caffeine crash after the fact.
Post-gaming, it was time to relax with some Sly CHILL, and in both Yakuza and Sanabi I found that this was a great way to heighten the impact of a game’s more down-tempo moments. As mentioned, there’s a third variety of Sly – Sly DREAM – that’s intended for consumption before bed, but I didn’t have the chance to try that one. I imagine that CHILL is a step below it in terms of relaxation, helping bring you back down to earth from the heady heights of BOOST’s high-octane gaming power.
Kidding aside, both varieties of Sly that I was able to try were definitely less pronounced in effect than traditional energy drinks. Whether that’s something you want is going to vary based on your preference – if you’re here looking for the kind of kick you’d get from Red Bull or Monster, that’s just not what Sly’s going to give you. On the other hand, compared to water, there’s a noticeable difference in how you feel from both varieties of Sly, plus they taste better, so I’m going to say they’re unquestionably superior to H2O. They’re also crash-free, as mentioned. If you’re the type who conks out after having a traditional energy drink, Sly just might be for you.
Let’s touch on the bad really quick as well, and there’s really only one concern here: Sly drinks can be a little pricey, and despite that you’re still getting less beverage per can than most traditional energy drinks. If you aren’t in the Southwest US, you’re going to have trouble finding this stuff in stores, which means getting it shipped and it’s already more expensive than your Monster, Reigns, C4 and so on as it is. I’d argue that when it comes to taste and performance you’re getting what you pay for, particularly with the superb Sly BOOST Tropical, but that’s something you’ll need to keep in mind.
Conclusion:
That said, it’s still worth giving Sly Circadian Beverages a try. If you can get it in stores, such as at 7-11 in the Southwest US as mentioned, the decision’s a no-brainer: pick one up and see what you think. Even if you have to get some shipped, though, you’ll probably be pleased with the results. This is a tasty beverage that pairs well with gaming while avoiding the X-TREEEEME excesses of its contemporaries. Pour some on the rocks and sip away. It might not send you to Evo or Worlds, but it certainly can’t hurt.
