The Queue: Can anyone truly say they have the hang of Thursdays?

If they do, they’re probably lying. Let’s Queue.

I tend to avoid 4x games like Civilization, or city builders like SimCity on (though I don’t think these fall into the 4x category). It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, and I spent countless hours playing these genres when I was younger — it’s just that I find I can louse those countless hours to them and then at the end have no meaningful memories or feelings about the time I spent with them. Like the video game equivalent of empty calories. I enjoy them, but there are only so many hours in a day and I’d like to spend my game time on things with more narrative bite… and I’ve found that sometimes I like these games more when I’m watching someone else play them. I watched a streamer who played Timberborn and named each one of the beavers. It was hilarious, and something I would never do if I played myself.

It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, World of Warcraft! I didn’t have a lot of free time in December (and what I did got devoured by I Was a Teenage Exocolonist), and last night I logged on to do a quick Queen Ansurek run to get a kill for guildies who still needed AotC, and then went to the Siren Isle for the first time, and I can safely say it isn’t my favorite place. The color palette is just so brown (with some black and of course the golden magic crystal we’re all there for). In the announcement video, Blizzard talked about the zone being styled after the American southwest, but this is the American southwest if you removed the stone in brilliant reds and oranges, ignored the striated stone that makes places like the Grand Canyon so breathtaking. Even an arid landscape can have green, and cacti can have colorful flowers.

But here it feels like everything is the same bland shade of brown. I just wasn’t having fun running circles around this morass of dirt and killing its seemingly random inhabitants. Oh, pirates here, I guess that makes sense (there are an awful lot of them, though). Uh, Vrykul on the other side of the island? Okay. Giant spiders and rain now? Well, why not. It feels random and meaningless (and have I mentioned the brown?) — I wish my first game of 2025 had been something I enjoyed more.

I am here for the stories, which can mean all sorts of things: big AAA blockbusters like Dragon Age or Horizon games, short games like Oxenfree or Duck Detective (which are very different genres, but both narrative-focused), mysteries like The Case of the Golden Idol (which has a significant story, if you pay attention beyond each individual puzzle). There isn’t really a genre of games in this mix. I like text-based games and visual novels; I like mobile games; I like massive epics; I like short adventures… as long as there’s an interesting story to be told, perhaps with some meaningful choices along the way.  Games without much in the way of an interesting story, no matter their genre or gameplay, I tend to lose interest in pretty quickly.

Also games with hippos. But there aren’t many games with hippos.

Uh oh. Is there anything else I need to buy?? Maybe just one more….

Okay my friends, that’s all for today. With my apologies for this slightly short and slightly late Queue — I promise to have one for you tomorrow that will definitely be exactly on time! (Definitely.)

Take care and have a good afternoon — I’ll see you tomorrow.