The best part of Destiny 2’s Solstice event is, sadly, the paid cosmetics

Destiny 2’s summer seasonal event, Solstice, is back, and it’s largely a dud outside of some cosmetic items.

The most exciting cosmetics that you can pick up are paid, unsurprisingly, meaning you have to fork over some real-world money for them, including a silly new beachgoing armor set for each class. But honestly, the paid cosmetics are all pretty awesome, and the best part of the playable event for me. The two standouts are a new vehicle and a Ghost Shell.

The Megalodasher Skimmer vehicle is basically a flying surfboard that looks like a bad-ass shark, and the Grillmaster shell equips your companion with a chef hat and apron, but also some adorable animations as it will occasionally toss around the tongs and spatula in its little hands.

The vehicle (1,200 Silver) and Ghost Shell (800) can be purchased separately, or as part of a bundle with more items for 2,500 Silver, which works out to $25, or more than half the price of the recent The Edge of Fate expansion. But they are both more interesting to me than the event this year.

In previous years, Solstice had a special activity played in a unique area called the European Aerial Zone or EAZ, where you would group up to kill enemies and bosses in waves as fast as you could. This year, it instead utilizes the new Portal feature, which is something like a shuffled playlist of random activities throughout the game, and they are activities that Destiny 2 gamers have played ad nauseam. But now, they have modifiers.

I took one look at the quest for this year’s event, nodded my head, and closed the game.

The Portal is not for me. I have been playing these missions, Strikes, Battlegrounds, and other activities for years already. EAZ was wearing thin, but at least it had its own identity. Maybe the quest gets more interesting after step one, but I’ll have to find out through friends to see if it’s worth turning the game back on again in the near future. I see there are new weapons to unlock, too, but I don’t think I care, unfortunately.

With Solstice coming to an end on Aug. 19, I don’t think I’ll be dipping my toes back in before then.