What are your “safety valve” games? What do you play to shut your brain off and unwind?

I might  be unusual for this, but there are games I play to simply unwind and vent. Games where I don’t have to think too hard about what I’m doing; not games with a lot of puzzles or complicated traps to solve or mysteries that require a lot of brainpower — so not a Myst or anything, but rather a Diablo. Frankly, I’ve always played Diablo games as a combination of escapism and safe space to let myself have the emotional outburst that I can’t have in my day to day life and I think I’ve been the better for it.

I’m not saying I don’t enjoy games where I have to solve a complicated Tower of Hanoi or work out the proper letters to spells a coded message out on the floor. I’m just saying that sometimes I’m in the mood for that kind of contemplation and problem solving. And sometimes I’m not, kind of like Alexander the Great walking up to the Gordian Knot and instead of untying it, slicing it in half with his sword.

In some regards, Diablo 4 is absolutely perfect for me in this regard. It has the storytelling elements I enjoy — it’s arguably the most complex of the series in terms of the story it’s telling and how it tells it — but it also has plenty of opportunities to simply explode demons in various ways. And, man, that’s what I played for a lot of the time. There is something so cathartic about walking into an ancient crumbling ruin and simply unleashing ultraviolence on the minions of Hell, and for me, it’s always been the Diablo games that best met that need for me.

Maybe you don’t have a game like that. But maybe you do, and maybe it’s Tetris, or Candy Crush, or even Red Dead Redemption 2 or what have you. I’m not here to criticize, but to share — so please tell me, if you have a safety valve game, what is it?