Mashing buttons since 1984
Dave the Diver is a delight. It is also a:
Resource gathering game
Restaurant sim
Rhythm game
Bullet-hell shmup
Mini-game collection (think Warioware, Iron Chef-style)
Farming sim
It is all those things while also secretly advocating that we take care of our greatest natural resource, our oceans.
Don’t waste your time reading any more reviews for Dave the Diver. Just go get it and play. I promise you will finish the first day with a smile on your face.
9.5/10
It’s another great weekend for some gaming! After a steady diet of Starfield and Inscryption for me, I decided to take a break for something a little more light-hearted and downloaded Dave the Diver. I’m 30 minutes in and I’m sold — I’m going to be playing this a lot in the foreseeable future. It’s got everything I like — exploring, resource gathering, crafting (cooking) and of course sushi! It’s Lemonade Stand for the twenty first century. This game is definitely in my wheelhouse!
In addition to Diving with Dave, I’ll be playing a little more Starfield, maybe some Forza and definitely some more Inscryption.
What are you playing this weekend?
It’s that time of year again when it gets dark a little earlier, the air is a little crisper and it just feels right to settle into some weekend gaming. Some people might be excited about pumpkin patches and haunted houses, but I’m ready for some videogames. And boy, what a stacked deck of new and not-so-new games to play.
On my docket this weekend will be to continue my exploration of space in Starfield with some occasional driving breaks with the new Forza. Starfield has slowly reeled me in and now that I’m comfortable with the interface and menus the story has taken center stage and I can relax and let that engross me.
If I need a break from those two games, I recently downloaded Sea of Stars (on PC), which seems like a fun little jaunt. And I still need to wrap-up my playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom.
What are you playing this weekend?
Pentiment is an odd game to review. I had no idea going in what kind of game it was. Solely based on a pretty sweet box art image and some positive buzz on Twitter I decided to give it a download. (I mean look at the box art. That dude’s head is ON FIRE)
It’s also hard to describe what it is. It’s a medieval mystery? A late Rennasiance detective story? A religious cover-up? I can’t explain. I was also stuck most of the time wondering “Is this fiction? Or based on actual events?” That both made it a little hard to believe and also a little exciting.
I would not be surprised to hear that many of the reviewers that scored the game high only played the first few hours and thought “yep, that’s a 10 out of 10!” I, too, was sucked in to the first act of the game. I was caught up in what I was playing. Did I make the right choices? I accused multiple people of being criminals and sentenced them to death (directly and through actions). Did they deserve it?
After the first act ended, it felt like the game had a good, but ambiguous (and short!), ending. I had no idea, no indication that it was the first of multiple parts. I thought my game began and ended with Andreas Maler’s story. Not so.
I bounced off the game for a while, somewhere in the third act. It was fine, the story was moving along at a decent pace but I just wasn’t in love with it. Ultimately I finished the game in a car, driving to NYC, on my iPad. These are not ideal conditions but I had wanted to try out Cloud Gaming from a mobile device for a long time and since I couldn’t be playing Tears of the Kingdom I figured Pentiment on an iPad, tethered to my phone, was the next best thing.
With my iPad jittering through frames provided by my poor phone as a hot spot, I played through the last 45 minutes (I hadn’t realized how close to the end I was) on a touch screen. Playing through the Cloud on the iPad is probably worth another post, but poor gaming experience matched how disappointing the end of Pentiment was. The 3rd act’s choices have less consequences (no one died by my actions) but raised just as many “did I make the right choices” doubts I had throughout the rest of the game. Unsatisfying.
Yes, the game wrapped up the dangling storylines with room for interpreting it how you’d like, but as a completionist who has to exhaust all dialog options and inspect every point of interest, Pentiment was not made for me.
6/10
I didn’t finish everything on my to-do list, but nothing matters now. It’s Zelda time.
What are you playing this weekend (besides Tears)?
To-do list before 5/12:
I started this post last year, after I finished Resident Evil 8. Now that it’s sit in the Drafts folder for months, I figured I should finish it up before the next Resident Evil release drops this week. And boy oh boy what a drop that is going to be — the remake of one of the best video games I have ever played — Resident Evil 4. Excitement for RE4 Remake is at an all time high around the buttonmashing household.
But first, a quick review of Resident Evil 8. After two VERY solid remakes, RE2 and RE3, RE8 is a continuation of Resident Evil 7, another of my favorite Resident Evils. It took a little bit to get used to the first person mode after going back to 3rd person for the remakes. Overall, RE8 was a really good game. The story was another bonkers Resident Evil storyline, complete with rounding up trinkets and items to solve puzzles and move the story along but this time the “trinkets” were actually pieces of your daughter, dismembered and preserved in jars littered throughout the spooky village.
Yep. And then things get weirder. Your previously murdered wife wasn’t your wife, you have been dead since RE7 (you really didn’t think you reattached your hand when the tall, pale vampire lady sliced it off, did you?) and your daughter is supernatural. So ya, another bonkers Resident Evil storyline. It’s why we love them so much.
So having finished Resident Evil Village and before diving back into RE4 again, I thought I’d post my rankings of all the Resident Evil games I’ve played.
Resident Evil Rankings:
Haven’t played yet: Resident Evil – Code Veronica, Resident Evil Revelations 2 (and too many spin-offs/mobile games to list)
And with that, it’s time to get ready to go back to the remote Spanish village where it all began…
Just like the rest of the Xbox world, I picked up Hi-Fi Rush after its surprise release last week. I unfortunately haven’t had a ton of time to play it yet but I plan to rectify that situation this week with some quality Xbox time. Between Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, my weekend is set!
What are you playing this weekend?
It’s actually been in my hands since Monday, but a busy week means it’s been plugged in, updated and then waited patiently for someone to download some games. (I did download and play Geometry Wars 2 just because, but nothing more)
Have I switched back to being a primarily console gamer? Maybe. I have been craving some laid-back couch gaming recently and I’ve been eyeing an Xbox Series X for quite some time, so when I found one in stock, I jumped at the chance. I have been enjoying the benefits of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on my PC for some time now, but now a whole new realm of possibilities sits before me. For now, I’ll probably fart around in:
After that, I think maybe I’ll try Pentiment, or Dune: Spice Wars, or who knows what. I’m open to suggestions!
(Oh, and lest I forgot, Marvel Snap has its claws in me. DEEP)
What are you playing?