This is so transparently a "we don't want to release anything big before our next console so let's make something cheap but kinda pretty in a year" game that I'm surprised there's anyone defending or genuinely enjoying it.
An immediate instinct might be to compare it to the latest Yoshi games, and I mean, yeah - both Showtime(!) and Woolie/Crafted World are ostensibly kids' games and are even made by the same developer. Both are kinda small, easy, chill experiences for da babies.
But the obvious difference is that the Yoshi games had...things? Impessive and creative visuals, solid gameplay, memorable music and/or set-pieces? Something? While Showtime(!) has, what, cool costumes for Peach to wear?
This is not a bad idea for a game, or even a Peach game, it's just that for the level of variety this one tries for, you need the various themes and levels to be distinct. Instead, half play the exact same with minor aesthetic differences that don't do enough to make you feel like you're even playing functionally different levels, let alone doing different "plays". Every theme is surface level and boring, to the point that I struggle to imagine myself be engaged by this even if I was 4 years old again.
The play performances thing was also super underdeveloped, with unclear rules or motivations for...anyone, really. I guess Peach is doing magical stage plays in a magical theatre where you need to follow the story to make things progress, but then what is that villian? Who are the henchmen? The bosses?
I'm not asking for the antagonist to have a deep backstory and complex motives for fucking things up, I'm asking for anything to engage with. And since all the narrative or audio-visual stuff is just plain dull, the gameplay is left to fend for itself. And it ain't doing good. That's cause, like I said, most levels basically play the same: you have a few minutes of dull-looking beat-em-up gameplay, then either the beat-em-up'ing continues and culminates with a "chase" scene, or you do some level-specific minigame that's impossible to lose. The only deviation from this, really, is the Boss levels, which are mostly pretty boring too. Just the standard "do a thing three times, but it's a bit harder each time", only I don't know who would struggle with this stuff besides literal 2 year-olds.
There are some other annoyances and gripes I have with Showtime (!), like how almost all of the few different transformations get repeated at least once, and never with any meaningfull new mechanics or twists, how Nintendo literally didn't tell us who was making this until it got leaked with the demo (maybe so we don't discover it's the Kirby's Epic Yarn guys and that this is a toddler game), or how this is clearly a cash-grab made in a year instead of a genuine attempt to make a good spin-off. But most of all, it just sucks that Nintendo keeps insisting on throwing together shitty barebones spinoffs into empty release windows instead of just making cool games that aren't their flagships.
Good thing I didn't buy it!
An immediate instinct might be to compare it to the latest Yoshi games, and I mean, yeah - both Showtime(!) and Woolie/Crafted World are ostensibly kids' games and are even made by the same developer. Both are kinda small, easy, chill experiences for da babies.
But the obvious difference is that the Yoshi games had...things? Impessive and creative visuals, solid gameplay, memorable music and/or set-pieces? Something? While Showtime(!) has, what, cool costumes for Peach to wear?
This is not a bad idea for a game, or even a Peach game, it's just that for the level of variety this one tries for, you need the various themes and levels to be distinct. Instead, half play the exact same with minor aesthetic differences that don't do enough to make you feel like you're even playing functionally different levels, let alone doing different "plays". Every theme is surface level and boring, to the point that I struggle to imagine myself be engaged by this even if I was 4 years old again.
The play performances thing was also super underdeveloped, with unclear rules or motivations for...anyone, really. I guess Peach is doing magical stage plays in a magical theatre where you need to follow the story to make things progress, but then what is that villian? Who are the henchmen? The bosses?
I'm not asking for the antagonist to have a deep backstory and complex motives for fucking things up, I'm asking for anything to engage with. And since all the narrative or audio-visual stuff is just plain dull, the gameplay is left to fend for itself. And it ain't doing good. That's cause, like I said, most levels basically play the same: you have a few minutes of dull-looking beat-em-up gameplay, then either the beat-em-up'ing continues and culminates with a "chase" scene, or you do some level-specific minigame that's impossible to lose. The only deviation from this, really, is the Boss levels, which are mostly pretty boring too. Just the standard "do a thing three times, but it's a bit harder each time", only I don't know who would struggle with this stuff besides literal 2 year-olds.
There are some other annoyances and gripes I have with Showtime (!), like how almost all of the few different transformations get repeated at least once, and never with any meaningfull new mechanics or twists, how Nintendo literally didn't tell us who was making this until it got leaked with the demo (maybe so we don't discover it's the Kirby's Epic Yarn guys and that this is a toddler game), or how this is clearly a cash-grab made in a year instead of a genuine attempt to make a good spin-off. But most of all, it just sucks that Nintendo keeps insisting on throwing together shitty barebones spinoffs into empty release windows instead of just making cool games that aren't their flagships.
Good thing I didn't buy it!
2024
Has some cool ideas, but is so cheap it hurts. It especially becomes apparent with the dub and the different localization options, where the dub is inconsistent and feels like it was done remotely and with little direction, and the localizations lack quality assurance. There are some confusing things that have to do with how quests work, and fights feel like a cakewalk or an impossibility sometimes, but the cheapness really is the biggest issue. This team might've bit off more than they could chew. Or I'm just stupid and impatient idunno
2024
A few missions in, this feels...wrong. On a few levels.
Mainly, the fighting mechanics feel unfinished: I've yet to encounter a single enemy type that would give me any grief if I just continue wailing on them, and dodging or parrying is strictly useless. There are a few combos you can input, but their effect feels homogenous, and doing them seems pointless, in part because the style system doesn't seem to understand what made Devil May Cry special. There it feels 1-1 with your actions: many cool and varied moves = good, a few repetitive moves = bad. Your rank changes every other second in direct response to your gameplay, and, especially in DMC 5, it feels good to maintain a high rank. In Slave Zero X, I can't figure out what even effects rating, because the only thing that I can always reference is the combo counter, which depletes WAY too quickly. Other than that, I'm not sure what's so different between my E-rated battles and my S-rated ones (the only two ratings I managed to get).
The second big "wtf" thing is the story. I don't know if I'm dumb, or shoud've beaten the game, or listened more closely to radio chatter, but I'm not sure this narrative makes sense. After a scene where two Guys talk about Things You Don't Know About and then Do Things You Don't Understand, you just take control of this guy with his sentient exo-sceleton acting as comic relief. The game doesn't try to establish...anything, really? All dialogue feels like exposition, and yet nothing is stated concretely. I almost felt like my (admitedly pirated) version was fucked up, until I looked up some playthroughs and no. It's just incomprehensible.
Looks good, doesn't work.
Mainly, the fighting mechanics feel unfinished: I've yet to encounter a single enemy type that would give me any grief if I just continue wailing on them, and dodging or parrying is strictly useless. There are a few combos you can input, but their effect feels homogenous, and doing them seems pointless, in part because the style system doesn't seem to understand what made Devil May Cry special. There it feels 1-1 with your actions: many cool and varied moves = good, a few repetitive moves = bad. Your rank changes every other second in direct response to your gameplay, and, especially in DMC 5, it feels good to maintain a high rank. In Slave Zero X, I can't figure out what even effects rating, because the only thing that I can always reference is the combo counter, which depletes WAY too quickly. Other than that, I'm not sure what's so different between my E-rated battles and my S-rated ones (the only two ratings I managed to get).
The second big "wtf" thing is the story. I don't know if I'm dumb, or shoud've beaten the game, or listened more closely to radio chatter, but I'm not sure this narrative makes sense. After a scene where two Guys talk about Things You Don't Know About and then Do Things You Don't Understand, you just take control of this guy with his sentient exo-sceleton acting as comic relief. The game doesn't try to establish...anything, really? All dialogue feels like exposition, and yet nothing is stated concretely. I almost felt like my (admitedly pirated) version was fucked up, until I looked up some playthroughs and no. It's just incomprehensible.
Looks good, doesn't work.
2024
I hate to shelve yet another game this year, but Pacific Drive’s somber tone, air of mystery and gameplay loop were fun at first, and quickly lost their charm and became tedious.
As far as gameplay goes, the real standout thing here is the tactility. Manual control is everything in Pacific Drive: you have to manually toggle the wipers, transmission, and the headlights, regularly refuel your car, recharge its battery and repair/replace every part of your station wagon’s outer shell. The replacements do have a tangible effect on gameplay, as well. A new set of wheels, or even just one of your old wheels getting loose or punctured have an effect on your car’s handling that is very much felt. The same tactility applies to out-of-the-car gameplay, too, though to a much lesser degree. You’re taught to disassemble everything and anything you come across in the Zone, but not every thing is interactable - far from it. Most doors are permanently locked, most anomalies are basically untouchable, and most of the tech in the zone is affixed to the floor.
The issue of limited freedom in general is the one you notice pretty much right away. The first minutes of Pacific Drive see you drive a car you can’t exit or modify, then you’re led through a string of highly directed tutorials where simple actions get introduced one at a time in a very limited environment. You literally are not able to do stuff like siphon fuel from a roadside wrecked car until you’re specifically told to by Oppy, at which point you’re finally allowed to do this very simple thing. This feeling of “there’s nothing to do until the game decides it’s time” persists well into the middle portion of your playthrough, at which point all illusions thoroughly break down and the game becomes predictable and simply boring. You settle into a routine: unlock some new recipes, repair/replace parts of the car, get on the road, go to a place, gather three thingamajigs to start a visually impressive but transparently non-threatening and directed sequence of doing a warthog escape through a portal, OR go through a gate on the other side of the area to do the previous routine in another place. Gathering supplies, avoiding anomalies and maintaining your car doesn’t change quickly enough: by the time I got to Mid-Zone I’ve already taken like 6 identical drives through the Outer layer, so it’s hard to be impressed by or interested in anything anymore. You know?
It’s a shame because I genuinely was starting to become invested in these kooky scientists’ past and present struggles, and if anything, the narrative and character work in this game are surprisingly decent. Too bad all you do is drive to a place and grind for new car parts!
Tentative 6/10, might change in the future
As far as gameplay goes, the real standout thing here is the tactility. Manual control is everything in Pacific Drive: you have to manually toggle the wipers, transmission, and the headlights, regularly refuel your car, recharge its battery and repair/replace every part of your station wagon’s outer shell. The replacements do have a tangible effect on gameplay, as well. A new set of wheels, or even just one of your old wheels getting loose or punctured have an effect on your car’s handling that is very much felt. The same tactility applies to out-of-the-car gameplay, too, though to a much lesser degree. You’re taught to disassemble everything and anything you come across in the Zone, but not every thing is interactable - far from it. Most doors are permanently locked, most anomalies are basically untouchable, and most of the tech in the zone is affixed to the floor.
The issue of limited freedom in general is the one you notice pretty much right away. The first minutes of Pacific Drive see you drive a car you can’t exit or modify, then you’re led through a string of highly directed tutorials where simple actions get introduced one at a time in a very limited environment. You literally are not able to do stuff like siphon fuel from a roadside wrecked car until you’re specifically told to by Oppy, at which point you’re finally allowed to do this very simple thing. This feeling of “there’s nothing to do until the game decides it’s time” persists well into the middle portion of your playthrough, at which point all illusions thoroughly break down and the game becomes predictable and simply boring. You settle into a routine: unlock some new recipes, repair/replace parts of the car, get on the road, go to a place, gather three thingamajigs to start a visually impressive but transparently non-threatening and directed sequence of doing a warthog escape through a portal, OR go through a gate on the other side of the area to do the previous routine in another place. Gathering supplies, avoiding anomalies and maintaining your car doesn’t change quickly enough: by the time I got to Mid-Zone I’ve already taken like 6 identical drives through the Outer layer, so it’s hard to be impressed by or interested in anything anymore. You know?
It’s a shame because I genuinely was starting to become invested in these kooky scientists’ past and present struggles, and if anything, the narrative and character work in this game are surprisingly decent. Too bad all you do is drive to a place and grind for new car parts!
Tentative 6/10, might change in the future
This game is the kind that breaks your brain in the most awesome way, with its time-shifting mechanic transforming the way you look at simple actions, in a way I kinda struggle to describe. It has gotten to the point where, after one three-hour session with Lysfanga, I started imagining working together with myself from different timelines when cleaning out my cats' litter box.
Unfortunately there are approximately three gorillion games releasing within two weeks of it, and some I can actually play, and a few look way more interesting. I do hope I won't forget to do a proper review of this one cause it is doing something awesome.
Sorry David Cage!
Unfortunately there are approximately three gorillion games releasing within two weeks of it, and some I can actually play, and a few look way more interesting. I do hope I won't forget to do a proper review of this one cause it is doing something awesome.
Sorry David Cage!
2021
yyyyyeah I don't know about that. Two days, four sessions in and I'm not into this one. Will try later
2024
Wow, another 2024 survival game that everyone says is the best shit in decades, that physically hurts to play and runs like shit. What a great year it's shaping up to be
2015
A delightful little time, though obviously underdeveloped in some key areas. Mainly, I'd say the visual style didn't really come together, and I do wish that the story was a bit longer. It's impressive due to how much scale and intrigue it achieves with so few elements present, but it didn't blow me away. But I guess that's what the sequel is for, eh?
28 hours later and my save got unexpectedly corrupted. Great job Ubisoft.
The game itself was brilliant while it lasted for me, but I suppose God has spoken to me about Ubisoft games
The game itself was brilliant while it lasted for me, but I suppose God has spoken to me about Ubisoft games
A 3D fighting game with lots of fanservice, where the only good thing is the animations and how they recreate scenes from the anime? The combat is just press buttons? MADE BY STUDIOS THAT ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY DO WORK FOR HIRE?
Hm...you don't say...
Hm...you don't say...
2024
It's so funny how people bash ripoffs and unoriginality RIGHT until the moment they personally find the ripoff funny/well-made, then they become the Slop's greatest warriors
2023
I hesitate to rate it (on account of having only like 20% completion), but even I can't deny that Pizza Tower is loud, hilarious and proud of all its unique quirks. It is a very well-made platformer, alas I'm...not into platformers. Not this general type of them, anyway.
I'm on record as saying that Super Mario World is a 10/10 masterpiece, and I can, theoretically, make lots of arguments as to why that is. Even as someone not very familiar with this genre, coming up with praise to its structure and improvements over the NES "trilogy" wouldn't be hard to describe. But honestly, it's the vibes I'm all in for, a feeling of wonder and whimsy, taken different shapes and expressed beautifuly through SMW's audio-visual components.
But 2D Mario has this 'race course' component to it that I was never a fan of. That part where cruising along the levels, avoiding enemies and obstacles, in the fastest amount of time possible, is the end-game that will probably net you the most fun. This became less and less prevalent as time went on, but take a look at Mario's former biggest competitor, and you can see this design aspect more clearly. Sonic Mania also has this quality to it: going fast in this game is not hard to achieve, but can be tricky to maintain, and it's clear that people who are good at platformers have infinitely more fun with this game than I did. It took me two playthroughs to try and beat Mania, and on the second one I gave up in the last act. Even though the vibes were also very much up my alley.
The thing with Sonic Mania, and Pizza Tower, too, is that they allow basically anyone to beat them one way or another, and you don't have to be good to just get to the end. But so much of the fun lies in great execution, good level knowledge, and high scores. They allow for incompetence, but ask for mastery if you want to extract all the gamer juice out of them. It's not a bad approach, and I must reiterate that Pizza Tower...seems to be excellent. But I guess not growing up with 2D games finally came back to bite me. Sad!
I suppose it's not a new or interesting observation to say "people who are good at games have more fun with them", but I'm not used to being on the receiving end of gitgut. I never had a problem with hard 3rd-person or FPS games, or, at least, I'd be willing to bet that I'm better at Dark Souls and Ultra-Nightmare Doom Eternal than most people. But I grew up with those kinds of games, and I didn't really grow up with Mega Drive or NES platformers. I guess I should get more comfortable with saying "this isn't for me".
I'm on record as saying that Super Mario World is a 10/10 masterpiece, and I can, theoretically, make lots of arguments as to why that is. Even as someone not very familiar with this genre, coming up with praise to its structure and improvements over the NES "trilogy" wouldn't be hard to describe. But honestly, it's the vibes I'm all in for, a feeling of wonder and whimsy, taken different shapes and expressed beautifuly through SMW's audio-visual components.
But 2D Mario has this 'race course' component to it that I was never a fan of. That part where cruising along the levels, avoiding enemies and obstacles, in the fastest amount of time possible, is the end-game that will probably net you the most fun. This became less and less prevalent as time went on, but take a look at Mario's former biggest competitor, and you can see this design aspect more clearly. Sonic Mania also has this quality to it: going fast in this game is not hard to achieve, but can be tricky to maintain, and it's clear that people who are good at platformers have infinitely more fun with this game than I did. It took me two playthroughs to try and beat Mania, and on the second one I gave up in the last act. Even though the vibes were also very much up my alley.
The thing with Sonic Mania, and Pizza Tower, too, is that they allow basically anyone to beat them one way or another, and you don't have to be good to just get to the end. But so much of the fun lies in great execution, good level knowledge, and high scores. They allow for incompetence, but ask for mastery if you want to extract all the gamer juice out of them. It's not a bad approach, and I must reiterate that Pizza Tower...seems to be excellent. But I guess not growing up with 2D games finally came back to bite me. Sad!
I suppose it's not a new or interesting observation to say "people who are good at games have more fun with them", but I'm not used to being on the receiving end of gitgut. I never had a problem with hard 3rd-person or FPS games, or, at least, I'd be willing to bet that I'm better at Dark Souls and Ultra-Nightmare Doom Eternal than most people. But I grew up with those kinds of games, and I didn't really grow up with Mega Drive or NES platformers. I guess I should get more comfortable with saying "this isn't for me".
2023
For a game in its genre, BRC isn't the most deep and replayable. I also do wish that the levels were more consistent, and that some mechanics were a bit deeper. At the same time, who fucking cares?
This game knows what it wants to do and just did it. It's a fun Y2K-styled ride through a set of colourful levels, where the mid-air poses are dramatic and the beats are FUNKY. It was a blast to go through, with barely any drag, and with a lot of memorable moments. More than a month away from beating it, I still sometimes get the itch to reinstall it and just go through the adventure once again. Or just 100% my save file, I dunno.
Fuck Sega! The JSR remake looks generic as fuck! All hail Team Reptile, blessed be thy skates, ever-lasting be thy trick chains.
This game knows what it wants to do and just did it. It's a fun Y2K-styled ride through a set of colourful levels, where the mid-air poses are dramatic and the beats are FUNKY. It was a blast to go through, with barely any drag, and with a lot of memorable moments. More than a month away from beating it, I still sometimes get the itch to reinstall it and just go through the adventure once again. Or just 100% my save file, I dunno.
Fuck Sega! The JSR remake looks generic as fuck! All hail Team Reptile, blessed be thy skates, ever-lasting be thy trick chains.
2023
In an earnest attempt to make a unique and emotional point-and-click game, Rundisc haven't quite managed to temper their ambitions and focus on the important parts.
It stands to reason that in a game all about various peoples being torn apart and pitted against each other by isolation brought about through archaic, othering traditions, you'd want to represent the actual pressure points between these groups in gameplay, show and not just tell. But doing so through goofy, ill-fitting stealth segments and boring roadblocks is hardly an interesting way to go about it. All the backtracking doesn't help the issue at all either, nor do the actual multiple mazes that you sometimes have to go through actual multiple times.
In the same vein, perhaps there needed to be more dialogue written to show the delusions the peoples of the tower harbour about each other. The bards talk about living in pure bliss and call you (and also everyone else) an idiot, and the warriors deem devotees to be akin to demons, but the devotees themselves barely have a social hierarchy to speak of, much less concrete beliefs about the other groups living in the tower. The scientists, in the meantime, are really just caught in everyone else's bullshit, wanting only to learn all there is about the world they find themselves in. And these divisions are very easily overcome: just translate the devotees' plea for an irigation system, and inform the bards' slaves that they can live free in the abbey. As a result of this whole "peoples torn apart" thing feeling underdeveloped, the 'true' ending feels good, but a bit forced, with decades, perhaps centuries of tribalism overcome, really, with just a couple conversations.
I'd be happy to treat this narrative as a cute little parable about how ignorance breeds bigotry and understanding begets unity and prosperity for all, but this specific part of the story just wasn't given enough attention. In the moment-to-moment, though the player character is explicitly a drone created to bridge the tower's divides, this is a tale of your journey. You get to desipher all these languages, you find out the histories and cultures of these people, and you are the hero who gets rid of this weird AI thing at the end. Even though Chants of Sennaar treats you as a literal translator-robot, it still tells your story, and the moment at the end, where every group in the tower gathers at the top to find out that (I think?) all their most central ideas are really the same and that they share a similar goal...feels somehow incidental.
But truth be told, even though a good bit of this game felt undercooked and unpolished, these small moments of you establishing connections between the different inhabitants of the tower, plus the deeply earnest final stretch, make this game a worthwhile experience. It's not GOTY material, but it doesn't need to be that to still have its fair share of brilliance.
It stands to reason that in a game all about various peoples being torn apart and pitted against each other by isolation brought about through archaic, othering traditions, you'd want to represent the actual pressure points between these groups in gameplay, show and not just tell. But doing so through goofy, ill-fitting stealth segments and boring roadblocks is hardly an interesting way to go about it. All the backtracking doesn't help the issue at all either, nor do the actual multiple mazes that you sometimes have to go through actual multiple times.
In the same vein, perhaps there needed to be more dialogue written to show the delusions the peoples of the tower harbour about each other. The bards talk about living in pure bliss and call you (and also everyone else) an idiot, and the warriors deem devotees to be akin to demons, but the devotees themselves barely have a social hierarchy to speak of, much less concrete beliefs about the other groups living in the tower. The scientists, in the meantime, are really just caught in everyone else's bullshit, wanting only to learn all there is about the world they find themselves in. And these divisions are very easily overcome: just translate the devotees' plea for an irigation system, and inform the bards' slaves that they can live free in the abbey. As a result of this whole "peoples torn apart" thing feeling underdeveloped, the 'true' ending feels good, but a bit forced, with decades, perhaps centuries of tribalism overcome, really, with just a couple conversations.
I'd be happy to treat this narrative as a cute little parable about how ignorance breeds bigotry and understanding begets unity and prosperity for all, but this specific part of the story just wasn't given enough attention. In the moment-to-moment, though the player character is explicitly a drone created to bridge the tower's divides, this is a tale of your journey. You get to desipher all these languages, you find out the histories and cultures of these people, and you are the hero who gets rid of this weird AI thing at the end. Even though Chants of Sennaar treats you as a literal translator-robot, it still tells your story, and the moment at the end, where every group in the tower gathers at the top to find out that (I think?) all their most central ideas are really the same and that they share a similar goal...feels somehow incidental.
But truth be told, even though a good bit of this game felt undercooked and unpolished, these small moments of you establishing connections between the different inhabitants of the tower, plus the deeply earnest final stretch, make this game a worthwhile experience. It's not GOTY material, but it doesn't need to be that to still have its fair share of brilliance.
2022
A wonderful little time that gives you a lot of bang for your buck, though not all of it is terribly exciting. It's undeniably fun to see new mechanics and permutations of old mechanics, as well as complete left-field segments being thrown at you at a fast pace, but this approach lets to some of those additions being bland or not reaching their full potential. I had a lot of fun exploring the ocean, preparing
ingredients for special guests or events, gathering upgrade materials...but I just know that if some of that were omitted the game would have been better.
I'm not saying 'make this just a fishing game or just a restaraunt sim', but looking back at my 20-something hours with Dave the Diver, I can't say my enjoynment was consistent. The first couple hours were a bit of a drag, then going ever-deeper and unlocking new tools and discovering new sides to this gameplay loop was fun as all hell! But then the Glacial Area was a bit of a let-down, and the Vents were just a medium-size lead up to the final, somewhat anti-climactic boss. And I just can't help but think that maybe you didn't need to do ONE shitty MGS segment, or ONE boat chase with a secondary character, or ONE round of a rythm game with the most embarassing of stereotypes. Maybe then the pacing could've been tighted up, the management aspect made more complicated than "just sell the priciest fish and you're golden"?
I'm not sure. This team clearly has a lot of talent, and one of the reasons I'd call time spent with this game well spent is that, while it's not super original, all the disparate parts of Dave the Diver are exceptionally well done and brimming with character, even if they don't always come together. The stylised pixel-art combines beautifully with the 3D environments and enemies, and while that style somewhat reminded me of Octopath and Katamari, neither ever got me into the fins of a hard-working, good-natured guy who just likes sushi and diving for the fish to make it, willing to battle giant monsters to do his job or to help a friend out. And though Katamari often deals with big stuff, the Prince was never asked to swim through the darkest depths of the sea to hunt for sharks quadruple his size. Honestly, Dave might be the saving grace of this whole game for me, as it never gets tiring to lead him on his journeys. I might've called the final boss anti-climactic, but the ending, with everyone living happily ever after and Dave, stretched out on his bed after a long day of fishing and killing a giant prehistoric shrimp, his gear drying on the balcony, after getting drunk with all his friends and co-workers, felt oddly fitting. This game might've been all wacky fish slaying, but it's also about a guy just doing his thing. And that's the kinda thing I can get behind.
P.S.
Shut the hell up about this not being indie, nobody said it is aside from the fucking Game Awards, and they gave mor speaking time to Actor McTexasman than their GOTY recepients. Who cares! Big companies putting more money into (relatively) smaller projects is exactly what the AAA space needs, and you assholes make it seem like Mintrocket is stealing Sabotage's thunder
ingredients for special guests or events, gathering upgrade materials...but I just know that if some of that were omitted the game would have been better.
I'm not saying 'make this just a fishing game or just a restaraunt sim', but looking back at my 20-something hours with Dave the Diver, I can't say my enjoynment was consistent. The first couple hours were a bit of a drag, then going ever-deeper and unlocking new tools and discovering new sides to this gameplay loop was fun as all hell! But then the Glacial Area was a bit of a let-down, and the Vents were just a medium-size lead up to the final, somewhat anti-climactic boss. And I just can't help but think that maybe you didn't need to do ONE shitty MGS segment, or ONE boat chase with a secondary character, or ONE round of a rythm game with the most embarassing of stereotypes. Maybe then the pacing could've been tighted up, the management aspect made more complicated than "just sell the priciest fish and you're golden"?
I'm not sure. This team clearly has a lot of talent, and one of the reasons I'd call time spent with this game well spent is that, while it's not super original, all the disparate parts of Dave the Diver are exceptionally well done and brimming with character, even if they don't always come together. The stylised pixel-art combines beautifully with the 3D environments and enemies, and while that style somewhat reminded me of Octopath and Katamari, neither ever got me into the fins of a hard-working, good-natured guy who just likes sushi and diving for the fish to make it, willing to battle giant monsters to do his job or to help a friend out. And though Katamari often deals with big stuff, the Prince was never asked to swim through the darkest depths of the sea to hunt for sharks quadruple his size. Honestly, Dave might be the saving grace of this whole game for me, as it never gets tiring to lead him on his journeys. I might've called the final boss anti-climactic, but the ending, with everyone living happily ever after and Dave, stretched out on his bed after a long day of fishing and killing a giant prehistoric shrimp, his gear drying on the balcony, after getting drunk with all his friends and co-workers, felt oddly fitting. This game might've been all wacky fish slaying, but it's also about a guy just doing his thing. And that's the kinda thing I can get behind.
P.S.
Shut the hell up about this not being indie, nobody said it is aside from the fucking Game Awards, and they gave mor speaking time to Actor McTexasman than their GOTY recepients. Who cares! Big companies putting more money into (relatively) smaller projects is exactly what the AAA space needs, and you assholes make it seem like Mintrocket is stealing Sabotage's thunder