3 Truths and a Lie:

This game is one of the best attempts at the souls-like sub-genre.
Lies of P has cool bosses.
Pinocchio is stupidly pretty.
This is better than Bloodborne.

I'll leave the interpretation up to you.

I would never have believed back in 2011 that DQM (Dragon Quest Monsters) was about to exit the United States for an astounding 12 years. How time flies...

Speaking of which, I remember playing Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 & 2 on GBC long before those memories of Joker 2. A novel twist on the classic Dragon Warrior RPG series, but certainly a shameless copy of Pokemon's template. And much to my joy and excitement, it brings and yet maintains its own strengths and novelties to the monster capturing sub-genre.

So here we are - decades later - and treated to a true sequel to Dragon Warrior Monsters 2. While it takes ideas and rules from the Joker series, it displays leanings and references to the originals as well. It combines into a well-rounded package that's a lot of fun to play.

Between monster families, talents, and traits, there are thousands of combinations of monster synergy to offer a limitless wealth of gameplay. That said, the game does not demand it, as it can be mastered with just a decent team - including the post-game. While it requires more strategy and planning than your typical Pokemon title, it still slightly disappoints in the late-game difficulty.

Besides that, the performance is not great. It's better than the recent Pokemon titles, but that's not saying much. Prepare to tough it out when environmental effects attack your poor frame rates. If you survive, you'll have a decently-sized adventure with cool monsters, fun dungeons, a crap story, and battles abound.

This is a competent 4-legged walking simulator with light puzzling. The fox mechanics are equally solid and adorable, with the sole exception coming from your furry friend's jump. Jumping from a stand-still is practically broken and jumping too close to a tiny overhang bonks your cute little head into frustration.

The main weakness are the levels themselves. They're sprawling to the point of pain. There are some decent collectibles scattered about, but the game does not do a good job indicating to the player what is considering in-bounds. So while it encourages exploring, you'll often bump into invisible walls. These issues come to an impressively boring climax within a giant forest level.

All things considered, this is a decent effort for a tiny indie studio. And I'm sure they'll improve on all aspects in the announced sequel.

Sly 2 makes a few adjustments to its predecessor. Hub levels now provide exploration and minor mission freedom. Game play systems are numerous - impressively so. Each world has interesting encounters that you don't see again. You also get to play a decent amount as your teammates - although, they're more annoying coming from Sly's varied move set and robust movement.

Like most PS2 platformers, it has some finicky controls and an occasionally disruptive camera. Those frustrations culminate in a finale that dampens the overall experience. Sly 2 at least offers more generous checkpoints and abandons life mechanics.

While Sly 2 does slightly improve on the prior title in most ways, it's not enough to elevate it to a recommendation in the modern gaming era.

I started this way back in 2016. It's actually a competent little handheld shooter. The gameplay is pretty fast and fluid, with aim assist allowing you to headshot like crazy.

The only issue is there isn't much game here. It's an arcade shoot 'em up, with what amounts to a level select screen with various objectives. Most missions take 3 - 5 minutes. The enemies are generic terrorists and the levels are drab and unmemorable.

I get that Playstation Studios were trying to churn out Vita exclusives in the early days. But this was not a good riff on SOCOM.

For posterity, I've been playing lots of games in 2024. But haven't finished any until now. I was diving with Dave in-between rounds of Helldivers 2, Balatro, Final Fantasy VII, and TTYD. With competition like that, I'm actually surprised I finished Dave's undersea quest before anything else. I attribute that largely to the solid first 2 Acts - slowly uncovering the enigmatic Blue Hole and its fishy denizens. But as the game stretched on, I felt the need to come up for air from my play sessions more and more often. The game just didn't have the juice.

Dave the Diver introduces new systems quite frequently. What is exciting at first beings to drown you in tedium. It takes too long to interact with everything and the mini-games are mostly unwelcome. Boss fights are fun, if not a little janky. As you dive deeper and deeper, it lacks the terror and mystery of something like Subnautica. Instead, compensating with puzzles and dungeons.

The game is at its strongest during full-screen pixel art cutscenes - a rarity in games these days. They look wondrous and convincingly communicate the personality of each pixel-filled character on-screen. In regards to regular gameplay, the graphics are fine, but nothing special.

It was certainly a fun underwater and sushi adventure, but perhaps 10 - 15 hours too long. Streamline the systems and there could be something special here.

Oh and one more thing:

HOT PEPPAH TUNAH