Earlier this year I finished Dave the Diver. Well the main story line, it’s just long enough to not get annoying. It is a great game but after 30 plus hours I had seen enough.
Sushi bar in dave the diver
I assume everyone knows the game by now, but in short, you start taking care of a sushi restaurant, but the catch is that you have to catch the fish for the restaurant yourself. And by doing so a whole story line unfolds where you meet an array of characters. The main game play loop is diving in the sea and catch fish, do some bosses and upgrade your gear so you can dive deeper and catch better fish (as in more valuable for the restaurant).
Final celebration in dave the diver, sushi bar
There are multiple mini games, even new ones are introduced well into the game. The boss fights are not too bad, a few were annoying or I had to look up what to do exactly but nothing I got stuck on.
Kronosaurus Boss Fight in Dave the Diver
All in all a very enjoyable experience, that I would recommend to anyone. There is still some stuff to do, upgrade the restaurant, finish catching all fish etc, but since I finished the main story line I haven’t had the urge to go back to be honest. There is more content coming soon, so I’ll keep an eye on that.
Dave the Diver – Thank you for playingIt sure was a fun adventure!
According to Steam I played Starfield for over 70 hours! And basically in a time span of about 6 weeks or so, until I moved on. Which wasn’t even a conscious decision, the interest waned and I had seen enough of the game. Although I’ll still pop in every now and then and at least finish the main quest.
So what did I think of the game ? Well it’s definitely entertaining for what it is. It played a little sluggish performance wise, I had to turn off most features even on a 3060 and a modern cpu. Sadly the ‘performance’ patch that was released recently (nov 2023) was way too late, this should have been in the game all along. Especially since they’ve been working for years on this. Although that doesn’t really show to be honest.
I loved the Akila (wild west) and the UC story lines. Especially the UC story, that should have been the main quest. The way it builds up, the scary first part of the mission in the dark with the horrible Terramorph that scared the shit out of you! Then some interesting decisions by the end of the quest line. It was really well done.
A lot of side quests were entertaining or at least fun to do as well. The shooting part of the game and the collecting of various weapons I liked the most. Didn’t really care much for the space combat. The outpost building was completely pointless and frankly quite annoying, so I didn’t bother with that anymore after trying a few times. The shipbuilding is pretty cool, although also here the interface is a bit of a let down.
What I didn’t like was the main quest and the whole restarting again in NG+. I assume everyone by now knows what the main story is about, and I don’t like a multiverse story. I doubt I’ll ever try a NG+, all the stuff you collected and decorated, all gone after a new game, no, thank you very much.
I didn’t encounter any game breaking bugs, my main annoyance was with the companions. The only one I kind of liked was Andreja, the rest I didn’t care much about, Sam was especially annoying and whining with that weird kid of his. Sadly he died at the Lodge (cough cough). They were also very buggy. They started shooting at everything that moved, wandered off doing their own thing and then warped back to me, if they weren’t standing in the direct line of fire.
So all in all it was a little disappointing, since it was a highly awaited Bethesda title, but some design choices were really weird. So many cut scenes in between traveling, or just warp from one part of the universe to the other end if you already discovered a city / town. And the weird bugs where you think, did anyone actually test this ? You’d expect better from a large studio after that much development time.
But I got a good 70 hrs out of it, and it was pretty entertaining. Next year when mods will be supported, it’ll be interesting what the community will come up with. I’ll keep an eye on that and maybe play the game again ;).
Railway Empire is a new railroad tycoon game, in the spirit of the old railroad tycoon by Sid Meier. Made by Gaming Minds, in Germany. I have put in quite a few hours in this game, because I streamed it the past few weeks on twitch. So if you check the videos on my channel, you can see (almost) the entire campaign.
The game is quite enjoyable, the graphics, especially the locomotives, are nice, and the presentation is polished. The track editing itself is pretty good, one of the best I have seen in a train game to be honest. One thing though, you can’t cross tracks ! Which is very frustrating, especially at the start. Somewhere along the line you get used to it, and build around it (or above as the case may be), but it’s still very annoying.
Character selection screen before starting a scenario
There are four play modes, you should probably start off with the campaign, then there are a bunch of scenarios, that are quite like the campaign chapters, but they’re standalone and don’t have any cut scenes. Then there’s freemode, which leaves you with the most flexibility as you can pick the era to play in and one of the five maps, that you get to know in the campaign. Last (and least ;)) there is a sandbox mode without money and competition. Might be interesting to test something out, but it doesn’t sound very challenging to me.
The campaign is nice with a story to it, basically how the first Transcontinental Railroad was build. Some funny moments are to be had, with the competition being cartoon like characters that talk banter every now and then. The objectives in the campaign aren’t always easy. I had to restart a few a few times to get a good understanding what needed to be done to complete a chapter. All in all the campaign is fun, but rather limited. Only 5 chapters in the US (5 maps in all that return in the other game modes) in the timespan of 1940 – 1910. No europe, asia and or japan or whatever. I assume some DLC or expansion packs will remedy this, but for a $50,- it’s a little limited to say the least.
Four track station in Indianapolis
Another annoying aspect is that the AI cheats. It’s literally on EASY mode. You can use this mode yourself as well, though I don’t know why anyone would as it takes all the fun out of a train game imho. This means that it only needs one track and the trains never collide, they just run straight through each other. So no need to track changes, double tracks, signals, multi track stations. It’s quite immersion breaking as well to look at. So you better don’t ;).
All in all I have been having a good time with the game, and spend quite a few hours in it, and I’ll definately will play it some more. I’ll probably also would buy some more campaign like content, if it’s somewhat reasonably priced. As of now it lacks content and a somewhat more sophisticated AI to warrent it’s big $50,- price tag. Put it on your wishlist and buy it when it’s on sale, that would be my recommendation.
The trains are pretty :).
The game is available on both GOG and steam. GOG is DRM free and comes with a kickback of almost 8 Euro in Europe, depending on your location. You can of course also buy a steam key at Greenman Gaming ;).
