The Queue: I am still here waiting

It’s Boxing Day up here in the endless winter of Canada. Boxing Day does not involve people beating each other to a pulp. Well, it can, but that’s because people get really weird about sales and returning gifts.

It’s the Queue. It’s the Holiday season. It’s the last dance, so I’m listening to Celldweller.

It makes no difference who we are

I will find whoever forced you to say that and I will make sure they regret it for the rest of their too brief lives.

I should admit that I won’t do anything more severe than discuss the etiquette of forcing people to talk about the NFL, or Netflix, and that their too brief lives are simply the transient human condition. Indeed, all of our lives are too brief, too ephemeral, and over just as we begin to understand life.

But trust me, existential dread can be pretty nasty.

No.

Liz got me Veilguard earlier this year, and I’m mostly playing that at the mo. I did pick up Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous for my Xbox (already have it on PC, but with my wife’s upcoming cancer surgery I mostly play games in the living room so I can spend time with her) and I spent my pittance of Christmas money on the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide just so I could see how it feels.

If you can get it, Buckley‘s works a treat, although I will admit that It tastes like something a Shambling Mound would use to murder its prey.

Actually it tastes worse than that. It’s really really awful. But it does usually clear up my symptoms very quickly.

Qunari Blood Santa approves of this message.

My top games coming in 2025, in no particular order and with me likely forgetting a few:

• Avowed
• The Outer Worlds 2
• Doom: The Dark Ages
• Greedfall 2: The Dying World

As for games I’m hoping to hear more about? Well, Mass Effect 5 or whatever it’s gonna be called is up there, and I’d love to hear that BioWare realizes it’s insane they’re not doing any DLC for Veilguard, and with Obsidian doing two big games next year that are both third person over the shoulder games I’d like to see someone step up to the 2.5 Isometric perspective CRPG table and deliver something cool.

In fact, there’s an answer for the question you asked about Blizzard doing a smaller single player game — I’d like something like the Icewind Dale games set in Azeroth, where you control a party and have adventures.

The silliest thing I ever did in a video game just because it was there? Helped a lot of people get their Holiday achievement mounts back in the day when it was gruelingly hard. Never did get those all done myself.

Kassandra of Sparta isn’t going to wear a silly holiday hat. V would probably do it, depending on if they could talk themselves into it. Master Chief would absolutely do it and he’d completely ignore any questions about how he got one on over the helmet.

Okay, that’s it for the Queue for this Boxing day. My next Queue will be in 2025.