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Dave the Diver is finally available on Xbox. I’ve played through this game numerous times on PC, and it is fantastic. As the portly Dave, you will venture into the Blue Hole, a wondrous area full of life, love, laughs, merpeople, Godzilla (if you have the delisted DLC installed), submarines, guns, and all the friends Dave makes along the way. This game rules, you should buy it, it’s Play Anywhere, too!
The Blue Hole
Dave the Diver begins focused on runs where the titular Dave dives multiple times a day to get ingredients for a restaurant, Bancho Sushi. Instead of a health meter, Dave has an Oxygen tank level. Getting hit, swimming fast, or just moving at all will drain the Oxygen tank.
To catch fish, Dave will use a bevy of melee and ranged tools. Nets to get small creatures, harpoons to snag bigger, and straight up guns of all varieties to murder mf’ers where they swim. Every fish you catch has a quality to it, with less violent methods, like tranquilizer darts, leading to higher-grade meat. No one wants to chomp into a bullet while eating a meal, after all.
Dave the Diver is an enormous game. Every time you think you’ve seen every mechanic or mini game it has, the game throws a dozen more at you. Some may say it has too much, and they may not be wrong. For me, I never got sick of it, though I did find myself doing less farm and fishery work in comparison to the night dives and restaurant running.
The sea itself starts smol, so very smol. Over time, you will upgrade Dave’s suits and tanks to let you go deeper and deeper. The constant carrot on a stick approach permeates through everything. Dave’s cellphone is your main menu hub for unlocks and upgrades. A weapon-smith weeaboo can help Dave craft the tools he needs to slaughter the innocent (fish).
Scientists constantly task him with finding specific objects or areas as part of side and main quests. You’ll find underwater societies where you can gamble your ass off for their local currency. The sushi restaurant itself is as deep as some management games. Every night you’ll sell the fish you caught, unlocking dozens of recipes over time.
At first, Dave is the only waiter; eventually, you’ll get kitchen and serving staff who have their own levels. Each meal can be leveled; there is a cooking-focused Instagram to unlock more passive buffs. Seriously, this game is freaking massive in its scope compared to most indie titles that have this graphical styling.
Dave the Diver mixes pixel-sprite characters with 3D environments in a satisfying way. Animations for Bancho and your weeb gunsmith harken back to old school classics like Another World. The dives start out bright as the sun penetrates the surface water. As you dive deeper, Dave’s headlamp turns on, and you’ll need the various per-run items left in the water to survive.
The Blue Hole is full of discarded human items that you can put to good use. Weapons, both ranged and melee, are joined by cooking pots full of valuable ingredients. There is kelp to cut down, wood, metal, and other resources to pick up. All of it is being used across various gameplay systems.
Tethering it all together is a wonderful soundtrack, full of a variety of songs that pay homage to gaming’s best. Dave the Diver loves its references, and while there is no voice acting, the writing is full of wit and humor. This review is of the Steam version, but this game can run on damned near any hardware. I have little doubt that it should be a locked 60 FPS on Xbox systems.
Wrapping Things Up
Dave the Diver is an excellent, enormous title that is best left as vague as possible. Go in without looking too deeply into it and be ready for dozens of hours of some of the best that video gaming has to offer.
Dave the Diver
Played on
PC via Steam
PROS
- Great Vibes
- Nice mix of 2D/3D
- Tons of variety
CONS
- May be too much variety for some
