The Queue: the grind

Don’t ask me man, I’m just here for the coffee.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we, like always, provide the answers.

In a broad, meta sense it’s definitely time for it to come back, and I’m excited! We’re definitely at that point in the expansion cycle where a new hotness will help fill the gap before the next bigger thing comes along.

In a “I’m queen of the internet and what works best for me personally goes” sense I wish they would’ve waited two, maybe three more weeks. I’m still digging out from under the holidays, and also snow — we still have some lingering here and there, which is kinda wild for our area. We also just had Winter Veil and the Anniversary just ended, so I feel pretty satisfied with what I have to do on the reg to keep current for just now.

I think if it was pushed out much further you’d start to get overlap with the Lunar Festival, and I think it does slightly overlap Love Is In The Air, so maybe now is good, to avoid scheduling conflicts as such. Plus, Plunderstorm is one of those events that does feel very optional, so I’m not mad about it, or anything. But also I’d maybe rather nap just now.

Absolutely. I usually play out-of-the-box initially, and then hunt around for mods if I feel like something is missing. I’m not going to say that older Elder Scrolls games or Fallouts are unplayable without mods, but it’s unlikely I would play them without Wabbajack for the UI overhauls alone. Those menus and menus-with-menus are out of control, especially the ones in Fallout which are either lime green text on black or charcoal gray on weird pukey yellow. I get that it’s super thematic, but it also burns my retinas. I’ve been watching a friend stream the Lorerim mod, and it looks super fun, and definitely injects a lot of additional appeal to a decade+ old game.

The other big game I enjoy modding is 7 Days to Die, specifically the Darkness Falls overhaul. I’m just not the biggest fan of some of the design direction (the books for skilling up truly suck), and some of the more hardcore and roguelike-ish elements added to Darkness Falls are fun for me.

Conversely, there are some games that do lack something, but I refuse to mod them because it changes the feeling of the game in a way I don’t really like. I’ve never modded The Long Dark, for instance. I get why people feel like it’s necessary to their enjoyment to have a little fox buddy follow them around, because the game is so deeply lonely, but then that’s the vibe.

Same, with Stranger Things. I blasted through season 2, and didn’t pick it back up at all. I also doubt I’m coming back to The Witcher.

It’s funny because I think a lot of it has to do with conditioning. I am a creature of habit at heart, and when I was a kid, Full House was on Friday, and if I want to see it I have to sit down then and watch it. Now, even though I could binge, I usually don’t — I wait until an evening I have free, watch one episode, and that’s about it til next week, because sitting around for an hour to consume content is a luxury I don’t often have. On top of that, there aren’t really filler repeats like there is for broadcast TV, so if a season is 12 episodes, once you finish three months worth of programming you’re done until the next season.

Also, I’m That Guy who binges and then cancels the sub, so I only get so attached to any kind of visual media. I do keep Prime because for me that’s just a perk after the shipping, and we also donate to our local PBS affiliate but that really isn’t about the streaming bit either.

I have had Brukel on my wishlist roughly since it came out, and it frequently goes down to like, 70 cents, but I still just can’t make myself do it.

The cold is far deadlier far faster than almost any other threat in the wilderness. I always sorta knew that because of the rule of threes you learn about wilderness survival in Girl Scouts: three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, three minutes without air. But you’d think, in a game where you’re not infrequently fistfighting wolves tooth and claw would be the major threat, and it never is.

And to add on to that, the thing that kills me is never really the weather, per se — it’s my own hubris. Sure, I have plenty of supplies to survive right here, but I could also go forage for mushrooms, or go ice fishing or something instead. No, I haven’t laid a line of tinder yet so I can safely find my way back in a low-visibility blizzard, but the sun is shining now. I don’t think I need to bring sticks for an impromptu survival fire, it’ll be fine. The bear doesn’t really path this way, as far as I know. I could bring antiseptic but that’s so much extra weight.