Dave the Diver sort of took the gaming world by storm earlier this year. It came out of nowhere as a really well done singleplayer adventure. I saw a few videos on it and liked what I saw, so grabbed it on sale.I'm having fun with it. The core loop of diving to get fish and complete quests, then doing the little restaurant management game has me hooked. There's a constant stream of upgrades and unlocks to keep everything fresh. It controls really well on my Xbox controller and looks and sounds great. I don't think I've felt any stagnation yet in about 90 minutes of play - new concepts and upgrades are constantly introduced.

I'm not sure if the game's going to stay this fresh for its entire roughly 20 hour runtime, but I hope it does. I've been in a bit of a rut lately with not being able to find games to really suck me in, but it seems like this one finally has. There's a bit of controversy over this game being nominated for some indie awards at The Game Awards, which has rubbed some people the wrong way considering it's made by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nexon. I personally don't care too much who makes the games I play, but it does feel a bit slimy to try and play the game off as indie (and take advantage of all the goodwill that generates) when the game's truly made by a billion dollar corporation known for predatory free to play MMOs.

That's neither here nor there though. Dave the Diver is a tight, fun, and competent singleplayer game that seems to do just about everything right.

Verdict: Keep Playing

Part of the Game Library Project