Comfort Food Games

I fired up Diablo III and started a new seasonal character, a crusader, which I'd never played before. It was the middle of the afternoon and I had some time to kill, but didn't want to play anything too involved or intense. Diablo III's blend of button-mashing and random loot fit the bill.

Earlier, I referred to D3 as "the comfort food of gaming," and I'll stand by that. It's a remarkably simple game with a complex wrapper. It can be as hard or as easy as you want. Sometimes you want a challenge and the reward that it brings; sometimes you just want to smash stuff.

My youngest son has fallen in love with video games, and it's been interesting to watch him explore the medium, but I can see this in him, too. Sometimes, he wants a challenge in Super Mario Brothers, where he's already better than I'll ever be, and sometimes he wants to play with his older brother in Smash Brothers, where they just break stuff and yell and have a blast.

Sometimes you want a fancy French meal; sometimes you want mac and cheese. I’m sure every gamer has some sort of comfort game they turn to. Mine is Diablo III.