Dave the Diver, Armored Core VI

 Dave the Diver(PC)

• I'm trying to finish Baldur's Gate 3 before Starfield comes out, but I tried Dave the Diver and got addicted.  
• It's a fairly casual game where during the day you dive into the ocean and gather fish, other aquatic animals, and restaurant condiments. At night you serve them in your Sushi bar. 
• At least it starts out that way.   Each half hour or so they introduce a new mechanic or a new way to interact with the game that even after 12 hours I'm still encountering something new to do.   
• I won't go into details since discovery is a big part of the game, but the latest thing it's added has given me Stardew Valley vibes.  
• The game is perfect on the steam deck. 

Armored Core VI(PC)

• A third person action MECH game from the developers of the Dark Souls games and it does share the difficulty of those games.
• I've never played an Armored Core game before so I thought the best time to try one would be a week before Starfield comes out and I have 3 other games I want to finish.  
• I've only put in about 2 hours, but I have earned my gamer card since I can at least say that I've beaten the Tutorial boss although it did take me 10 tries. 
• Customization of your mech is half of the game so there are a ton of options of how to build/paint your mech to fit your game play style.  One of the nice things is that you can sell back items purchased from the store for the same price you bought them so no punishment for trying new parts or builds.  You can even upload your own images to put on your Mechs. 
• The story is delivered by codecs so it's usually just a voice talking to you giving you mission briefs. You will be making choices that will affect which missions you can go on so you won't see everything in one playthrough.  From what I've read one playthrough is around 16-20 hours.  
• The combat is pretty hectic and a lot to keep track of from your booster and weapon cooldowns, to the whole 3D space you can be attacked from.  Luckily the boss fights have checkpoints, so unless you need to buy something from the store, you don't have to restart the whole mission if you get in a tough fight.
•  There is a multiplayer arena where you can test out your best builds against others.  You can also upload/download builds for specific campaign missions if you find one giving you issues.  

Starfield

• If you buy the premium edition, the game will be playable next Thursday night at 7pm Central. From some leaks it appears the game may be the most polished Bethesda title.  

Baldur's Gate 3, Benq 4550i 4k Projector

Baldur's Gate 3

• ​It's awesome, go buy it.

• I took the day off when it came out, which is usually never a good thing to do because most games have bugs or issues at launch.  The 120 gig game took about 30 minutes to download and I had no bugs or any other issues.  Good job Larian.  

• T​he game does a good job of explaining everything so if you aren't familiar with D&D you don't have to be.  It's a very accessible game and a good starting game if you've never played a CRPG before.   ​It has a story mode if you just want to experience the story​ without the combat being difficult.  

• ​The story has been ​interesting so far and there are a ton of difficult choices to make that can alter your story dramatically.  You can save scum your way through the game to always get the best outcome but what is the fun in that?   

• The combat is turn based and on the normal difficulty setting I've had to try some battles multiple times, but nothing has been frustrating. It's easy to switch out your companions so you can try a different strategy.  Also any companion not in your party still levels up so every character is around the same level.  

• ​I'm playing with a controller and they've done a great job making that control scheme work on a game like this.  It's a totally different UI than the Keyboard\Mouse setup and you can switch between them at any time. 

• The only gripe I have is that everything is voiced except for the main character, but some may like that as it could add to the roleplaying aspect.  

• The game is in the top 10 of Steam concurrent player list with over 800k users and it releases on the PS5 in September so it seems to be a massive success and I'm happy for the developer.  

​Benq 4550i 4K projector

• I accidentally bought this projector about a month ago.  I was browsing the Benq site and was curious if they charged sales tax so I went through the process and was thinking I'd get to the payment  confirmation page and exit out.  The payment confirmation page turned out to be a purchase confirmation page and the Benq site doesn't allow you to cancel your order.  

• My older projector, Sony 40es, is a 1080p projector and the input lag was a bit high at around 30ms so I never really used it much for gaming.  So far with the Benq I haven't turned on my TV in two weeks.

• The Benq uses an LED light that is rated for 20,000 to 30,000 hours so no need to worry about replacing lamps every year. It's also a very bright projector so it does HDR content reasonably well.  

• It is factory calibrated and the colors are very accurate and I could tell immediately in movies as the skin tone was so much better than my Sony.  

• It can only do 4K/60, but that's fine for me and the input lag is not noticeable so FPS games feel great.   

• It also has 3D support which is still a top feature for me.  Fury Road in 3D is awesome. 

• The only negative is that the fan could be a bit quieter.  It's not that loud, but when there is a quiet scene in a movie you can hear it running. 

• The ultimate viewing experience is still my OLED TV with true blacks, but I've been having a blast playing Baldur's Gate 3 on a 132 inch screen. 

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