@SamBatyley on Twitter: I just said this in an interview.

“What kinds of games do you play?”

“Oh, mainly cozy games like Diablo, Coral Island, Cozy Grove, & Destiny.”

& then I explain, those are cozy to me. Zero stress, just zoning out and having fun with my pals or solo. Cozy is so subjective.🫶🏼

This is why I return to Destiny again and again. It’s an old worn pair of pants. A cozy sweater to wrap up in for the day. Destiny is comfortable. It’s not perfect. It’s aged. It’s not going to compete with the youngest and newest games. It’s not going to compete with anyone for hottest or trendiest. But I know it.

I know it so well. The skies I’ve stopped to admire and battled under. The maps I’ve played and replayed and re-re-re-re-replayed thousands of times. The hundreds of days I’ve spent running across the same plot of land. If the digital artwork were earth, there would be deep paths worn into the dirt.

It’s also a decision I don’t have to make. I sit down with my coffee or cola. I turn on my Xbox and I press A.

That’s it.

I don’t have to look through my library. I don’t need to worry about whether there’s gigabytes of updates to wait through. I don’t need to worry about how the game has changed since I last played it.

I sit down. I power on. I play.

I play with my friends. I play with new people. I play alone listening to music of podcasts in my ears. I don’t need the dialog or music. I’ve heard it all before. I don’t need to worry about what the game is trying to tell me, I can see where I need to go and what I need to do.

Destiny is where I’ve spent thousands of hours playing since 2014. I’ve recorded a weekly podcast about it since 2019. There’s plenty in the game I have never done. There’s parts of the world of I have never seen nor step foot into. But I play what I like and I play it often.

It’s an easy choice to the point where it’s not even a choice anymore. It’s my default. I don’t look at other games when I turn on my Xbox. I turn it on and I’m surprised if it’s not sitting in the first spot ready to go.

This is how I will describe the Crackdown series to people unfamiliar with it.

I do the things that I’m designed to do: Punch dudes, shoot dudes, squash dudes, explode dudes, run dudes over in my car, throw dudes off high ledges. Each time an enemy dies, he renders up pretty, colorful bubbles that flutter pleasingly toward me. These are upgrade points that level up my various skills. So I become better at punching, shooting, and squashing at a rate that is comparable to the increasing menace of my opponents.