

When you’re desperately defending a capture point with your squad or speeding over rough terrain in a smoking truck, it’s easy to look past the super lo-fi graphics.

The game’s small dev team has clearly prioritized feel and function over aesthetics, and for the most part, it works. Sim elements like detailed bullet-drop models, functional scope zeroing, and multiple reload styles contrast with arcade-y allowances like infinite sprint, easy revives, and vehicular hijinks. The 127-versus-127 combat sandbox sits happily between Arma and Call of Duty, plucking bits from each.
#Demon hunter chris pc game series#
Nicole Carpenterīattlebit Remastered takes the spirit of the Battlefield series at its very best. It makes for such a compelling loop, and a consistent advancement of the game’s story, that I kept finding myself in that “one more day” mindset, eager to jump back into the ocean for one more go.

But Dave the Diver would feel less complete without any one of them. It really shouldn’t work I can’t imagine another game where all these disparate ideas coalesce so seamlessly. Somehow, there’s even a well-done rhythm video game - starring one of those anime idols that the arms dealer loves - that makes perfect sense. Between all that, Dave’s harvesting rice and vegetables on a farm, curating a hatchery, racing seahorses with mermaids, and taking down a suspicious group masquerading as environmental activists. At night, Dave slings sushi and pours drinks at the restaurant, frantically running back and forth between clearing dishes, delivering sushi, and refilling the freshly ground wasabi. When you’re not picking up sea urchins or spearfishing sharks, Dave is assisting the rest of Dave the Diver’s cast of characters - his sushi business partners, a community of seafolk, an anime-obsessed weapons expert, and a pair of dolphins. But that would also be underselling the game, and understating things quite a lot.ĭiving into the mysterious Blue Hole, Dave spends the first two quarters of his day swimming deeper into the colorful abyss, discovering both sea life and a story that’s equally absurd and earnest. You could describe Dave the Diver as a fishing game and a restaurant management simulator, and that’d be correct. The gameplay didn’t just help me stick with the game, but instead allowed my excitement to bubble over every time I took on a new mission. The gameplay grips you from the very beginning as Clive smoothly dashes, parries, and swings his giant sword and varied magic with a dazzling amount of style. The quality of the story in this long and linear character-driven RPG waxes and wanes, but the action combat is among the best I’ve ever played. But the developers then sprinkle in Final Fantasy elements like mother crystals, dazzling kaiju fights between summons (known as Eikons in this iteration), and of course, Chocobos. There is palace intrigue, a whole lot of sex, and endless war between nations. The story begins when Clive’s life takes a turn for the worse and he vows to destroy the monster who ruined his and his family’s legacy.ĭeveloped by Creative Business Unit III, Square Enix’s internal team behind the MMORPG Final Fantasy 14, 16 leans into patchwork territories of fantasy genre fare. You play as a broody Clive Rosfield, a young man whose life’s work is to protect his little brother, Joshua. The newest mainline entry in the long, winding series takes you on a lavish, unadulterated Game of Thrones-esque adventure. Mike Mahardy Final Fantasy 16įinal Fantasy 16 kicks ass. We still have quite a few entries in the latter category before the year is out, and some of them look promising as hell - but through it all, we’ll keep championing the odd little gems that also lie in wait. More than anything, the video games of the first half of 2023 serve as a reminder that daring, strange, wonderful creations are everywhere, if you just divert your attention from the big game release cycle long enough to find them.

Even something like Battlebit Remastered, itself an excellent homage to the glory days of Battlefield, is painted with a Roblox-esque sheen. In another, we’ve dived to the depths of a mysterious tropical lake, only to then sling fish at a sushi restaurant before exploring the remains of a civilization of merpeople later that same day. One mobile game reimagines open worlds as pie charts, in which you begin in the center and gracefully guide through a slice (read: biome) until it surrounds you in all directions. It took some time, but 2023 finally got weird.Ī year that began with a series of fantastic remakes has gradually given way to new games about zealous hat salesmen, clairvoyant nun detectives, and existential god-fearing fishing communities.
