The Queue

Wow, how about that REDACTED when REDACTED ended up REDACTED? Crazy! I love Lord of Hatred, it’s completely nuts.

It would seem that, despite only playing it a couple times I’m pretty good at Decor Duel. Did you know that, if you last until 2 minutes 30 seconds, you’re permanently found with an arrow above your head until the match ends? Seems a little like a blue shell kinda thing, but what do I know, I’m just a games journalist.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask where are we? What the hell is going on? And we answer that it’s all for the best (of course it is).

On Saturday over in the Blizzard Watch Discord, Anna Bell noted that the recently-released Titanium Court was “aggressively Phil U. coded.” She’s not wrong, of course; it has been on my wishlist since the demo launched a month or two ago, and an incredibly wry combination of match-3 puzzler, roguelite, and auto-battler about faerie courts trapped in a perpetual war in a surreal shifting reality, led by a queen who really just wants to go home but finds that her steward who holds all the answers is avoiding her as much as possible, is in fact squarely in my wheelhouse. Titanium Court is a game that’s not afraid to ask the big questions, like “what if you could replace intrusive thoughts with pleasant ones about baseball?” and “is the desire for a taco universal?”

And so, I launched it yesterday and lost my entire night immersed in it. I looked up and said “when did the sun go down?” Been a while since that happened. But today is a new day! So let’s set that “potion of liking baseball” in a sunny spot until it bubbles and answer some questions insetad, because this is The Queue, where we do that kind of thing.

This is Mistress Nagmara, a barmaid at the Grim Guzzler tavern in Shadowforge City, Blackrock Mountain (home of the Dark Iron Dwarves). In WoW, she used to start and end a quest that has since been removed from the game, making her a rare Succubus character that players could interact with. In Hearthstone, she’s just been added as both a Warlock skin and a bartender in Battlegrounds. She’s my current bartender of choice, in fact. I really like her voice lines. She’s very good at her job of encouraging you in a way that sounds much more “friendly barmaid” than “saucy succubus,” to be honest.

Also, “Nagmara” is an anagram of “anagram.”

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where sometimes we like to highlight random things because we just think they’re neat.

It’s like I was just here, but here I am again. Are we stuck in a time loop? Am I trapped in an eternal Thursday? I guess I’ll find out if tomorrow never comes.

But for now, this is the Queue, our daily Q&A column where I try to answer your questions and then we argue about it in the comments. Let’s get to it!

I don’t know if there are any frogs in Diablo 4. I haven’t noticed any, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. So even though we’re largely talking about Diablo today, we will have to make do with this very ordinary and not at all harmful Warcraft frog. It’s probably fine.

This is the Queue, our daily Q&A column in which I answer your questions and we all hang out in the comments section to argue about it. Let’s get to it.

I have a ton of stuff going on both IRL and around the site, so of course this week I got sick and pulled like three muscles. It’s fine, everything’s fine.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and I’m just gonna sit here until I can go to bed.

I’ve been playing a bunch of HADES 2 this week, and it more than lives up to the hype. I knew it would, the first one was excellent, and I’ve loved everything else that Supergiant has put out. I even have the Bastion soundtrack on a CD around here somewhere!

I don’t know what it is about sending a godling to escape the underworld that is so compelling, but the “one more run, then I’ll go be productive” is super strong in this game. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the art, maybe it’s the snappy combat. Whatever it is, I know that I can’t get enough of it. Seriously, they gave me a weapon that’s some big metal claws with wings, and the wings launch rockets at my enemies — sometimes, while I’m punching those very same enemies! Is it very accurate in history? Not particularly. Is it rad as heck? Definitely. Plus how do we know for sure that there wasn’t a god roaming around ancient Greece with some badass rocket launcher wings? Maybe all of their statues were blown up… y’know, in the incident.

While I go and try out the new version of those wings that come equipped with a frickin moon “laser”, it’s time for our daily question and answer column — The Queue!

This is Bubbles. (The one standing next to her is some weird fish mage whose name doesn’t matter right now.)

Bubbles took a sabbatical for a couple years, but she’s back to fulfill her job of lobbing balls of water at fools with deadly force to help her master. Dutiful and unquestioning. Water Elementals are known for harmoniously agreeing with those who summoned them, rather than entering nebulous “contracts” or being employed against their wills (which usually leads to constantly plotting revenge, and that’s antithetical to good water flow).

We’re in The Queue, a daily Q&A column that delivers answers to questions day after day, with consistency and a dash of spunk.

Fish are always up to something, and while Warcraft has several talking fish, I’m extremely concerned about the addition of fishing to Diablo 4 in the upcoming expansion. What kind of fish will we find in Sanctuary? What will they whisper in our ears? Will we replace the Cow Level with a Fish Level?

I have so many concerns.

But for now, this is the Queue, our daily Q&A column where I answer your questions and we all get to hang out in the comments and chat. Let’s get to it.