The Queue: You should play this game

Did you ever recommend a game a whole lot to (almost) literally everyone, and then they immediately turn around and recommend a different game to you, but you’re already busy playing the game you keep telling (almost) literally everyone to play that you really don’t want to play their game? And yes, even the standalone content, like the soundtrack, is superb to the extent it gives you frisson chills, and gives you a real sense of the game to boot? And then everyone else is like, “but Bugsnax is so fun!” and you’re just real tired all of a sudden?

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions, and you should definitely play The Long Dark, and then maybe we’ll answer.

Have we met? I am Dr. Perky.

But no, off-brand soda is one of the few places I draw the line. I’ll drink store brand sparkling water, since they all taste like someone taught a strawberry to weep, so there isn’t a huge variance in taste to me. I won’t even deign to drink Pepsi if Coke isn’t available. Utter swill. And everything called Diet or Ten Calorie or whatever tastes like chemicals — especially store brand sparkling water.

I’m not sure what the plan with Arthas is. He’s so core a character to the story of several of the current group of main characters that in a place like the Shadowlands, having him pop up as a Necrolord or something would make a lot of sense. However, with the constant reminders of him through the stories told both in the out-of-game “last time on Azeroth” shorts and now some the in-game cinematics, makes him feel rather like Chekov’s Runeblade at this point. It would be like Illidan didn’t show up to killsteal Gul’dan in Legion. It seems really weird to be at this point in the expansion and he hasn’t turned up even in a passing reference in one of the Maw areas.

We’re not sure where we’re going from here, though. It’s possible that Arthas will dovetail fully into the next expansion and we’ll work with him. It’s possible this expansion just ends weirdly and abruptly without the benefit of a meaningful denouement — though, I wouldn’t expect this, since a lot of other interpersonal stories have been addressed this expansion, and this particular story has been touched on repeatedly throughout every stage so far.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but if we don’t see Arthas at all I’m going to be annoyed about it, frankly.

That was, by far, the absolute worst thing about Oblivion. In almost every other way I found that to be a more fun game out of the box than Skyrim, especially with those portal/rift things into hell. But rolling up on a random encampment in like hour 20 of gameplay in midgame gear and getting completely rocked by three random crummy bandits made it such a terrible experience I rarely made it to endgame. I’m okay with a slightly dynamic power curve, being halfway toward literal godhood and still getting destroyed by mudcrabs because of their power curve was just stupid.

So, there was usually a point in that game where I said “heck it” and just cranked the difficulty to zero. Potato, potato. …that joke doesn’t really work in text, does it.

Habitica. It’s not designed specifically for working out per se, but you can integrate workouts into their system really easily, and I do. It works really well for me because you can drop anything on there you’re procrastinating on, which tends to be a real issue for me with super random stuff that wouldn’t be a part of other trackers because it’s so specific and weird. It’s also a lot more adaptable and forgiving than something like Duolingo — though doing Duolingo was on my Habitica tracker when I was actively doing it. Having a 200+ day streak broken because Duolingo resets promptly at midnight local time, with no way to change that time, and it’ll reset the streak even if you were halfway through your lessons for the day at midnight, made me drop the entire thing cold. Which, oui, je sais que je suis bizarre.

Habitica’s rewards systems are very robust and you can tailor it to your own personal quirks. For instance, gear power doesn’t tend to be much of a hook for me — I don’t really care about stats or percentages or what modifiers generic terms like “intellect” grant me in this particular game. However, cute companions and outfits really get my dopamine flowing, so when I pick rewards, I tend to go for those. You can also tailor it to your own life, like not a lot of people will have a weekly “write The Queue” task.

They also have groups you can join with interests that could be applicable to the goals of the app — the group for writers is great for chatting about making word counts or outlining structures, for instance, or fitness groups with workout challenges. There are also groups that are just for fun, but even forming relationships in those with the overarching shared interest of getting your life (sort of) in order with the app can be invaluable.

At this point I kinda wish I was sponsored, but. Habitica!