[General Discussion] Your Christmas game 2021, plus previous favourites for the season

Isslander

Isslander

Gordon's alive!
3 August 2003
Iceland
Liverpool
Is there really any time better than Christmas for the playing of the video games? I don't think so. It is probably as different as people are many, I bet a lot of players have little to no time to play during the holidays, because it is a family season after all. So if at this point you only have the fond memories of playing a special game for Christmas, please share! Along with what you intend to play this Christmas, of course. Who knows, it might give someone else an idea for a good game.

My recent Christmas games have been Marvel's Spider-Man, The Uncharted games, Witcher 3, Hitman, and I do like to get some PES in there as well. But one particular game I really loved and actually played through pretty much from December 23rd to January 1st that year, was Prince of Persia from 2008. A very atmospheric game, and a huge departure from the series, both in structure and aesthetics. Sort of a reboot, and one they would never revisit. I never actually played the DLC of the game, even if it was supposed to conclude the cliffhanger-ish ending of the main game. But I really enjoyed my time with it, and it fit the season perfectly. It's no Sands of Time, and I probably won't ever play it again, but I will always remember it fondly.

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To more pressing matters, my Christmas game is still undecided, a first world problem for sure, but a problem none the less! My list so far is
Control, if it goes on sale
Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, if it goes on sale
Arise: A Simple Story, the Evo-Web's own game (not really but still)
Or something from my shame pile
Horizon: Zero Dawn
God of War
Uncharted: Lost Legacy
 
Fifa 98 as a little kid.

Dying Light in relatively recent times is the only other game I tie to Christmas.. wasn't supposed to, but felt kinda relaxing to jump around and scavenge for things.
 
Summer Games 2 for me on the Commodore 64.

I actually played it about a week or 2 before Christmas. My friend and me were hunting my family’s home to find presents that were wrapped up for me. We found it in my brother’s cupboard, we unwrapped it, played it on my friends C64, then wrapped it up again in the same paper ready for Christmas day.
 
Has to be the NHL series,from -95 and up until early 00's.
Pre online gaming,bunch of us 'kids" (25-30) use to play for a weekend ,having tournaments.
 
I was always into games that let me do a lot of weird, some would say - pointless stuff. If game had a good, playable base and provided me with options to use my imagination - I loved it.

Many years ago I was totally sucked into Operation Flashpoint. Most realistic war experience I ever played. Once I completed main campaign i spent one Xmas in edit mode. I was creating my own missions, building bases, placing vehicles, setting up patrols and their paths on the map.. then I was placing my player somewhere and was trying to complete some imaginary objective. Game mechanics for mission editor itself wasnt the best and lacked some logic, but I didnt mind. One of my favourite things to do was to drive around the map (which was huge), finding a nice spot (like a big mountain with village at the bottom) and creating "mission" there. I was placing hundreds of enemy soldiers on the mountain, setting them up to run down the mountain, towards the village and placing my player, as a sniper, in the village itself. I was starting the timer, trying to survive as long as I could - outnumbered, surrounded, with limited ammo. Such great fun.

Another one of my "Xmas" games was World of Warcraft. Again - doing pointless things, like fishing, hunting, skinning animals and selling skins in auction house. It was back when World of Warcraft just started. Game was still nicely balanced and had a lot of charm. People were nice and helpful and there were hundreds of players online all the time. All the low level places were beautiful, had great music and I loved to just travel around without purpose.

Last few years I didnt really have any Xmas games. No games delivered this special something for me - good base gameplay and plenty of pointless stuff to do. Red Dead 2 was close, but it was missing something to hook me for longer.

Now I got Death Stranding and im eager to try it. Beside all the football games that I play regularly - I kinda miss a game like the ones above, with enough magic to trigger my imagination.
 
My first real gaming experience (other than playing at other kids' houses) was getting a Game Boy for Christmas (with Super Mario Land, what a game) when I was a little kid. So that comes to mind before anything else.

But from being a teenager onwards, Christmas became "let's get the PlayStation out and have a PES tournament" (any excuse, really, but at Christmas you had 6+ hours you could fill with competition - no need to save and pick it up again at a later date). This happened for years, until we all grew up and life got in the way (my dad excluded, who plays FIFA every day even now).

@Emroth gave me back a little bit of this with our Christmas FIFA Europa League. Cheers, bud.

As for 2019 games... Untitled Goose Game put a huge smile on my face, and not enough games aim for that any more. Loved the Crash Team Racing remake too, until it became clear that if you didn't just spam the turbo-slides literally 100% of the time you can't win (so I ended up replacing it with Gran Turismo Sport, but that's not from 2019). Still great with friends though. And other than FIFA 20 and Football Manager 2020, that's it!
 
Was it the old Game and Watch type? Those are classics.

Anyway, it was so etched into my brain that The Outer Wilds was an Xbox exclusive that I didn't buy it this year. Would have made for a perfect Chrimbo game but I only saw it on the PSN store last night. Think I might just save it until next year, when I will rename this thread and use it again!
 
Yeah I went by to my childhood and played a crazy amount of NHL 20 this Xmas,just like I did 25 years ago.
Big difference is I played tons online this year,and one of the guys I played Vs was one of the guys I use to play against back then.
Really cool.
And a lot of The Division +Destiny
 
It's that time again.

This time I will be watching the PSN sales closely, hope to nab at least one of these for the Chrimbo:

Ghost of Tsushima
Fuser
The Outer Wilds
 
Is the best time too, as said.

Outwith PES which I get at launch (although not this year, just got mines yesterday for PS5 to tide me through), and if a game has a late year release I'll wait till Xmas.

I do have the luxury of a couple of nephews who I borrow games off of too, and I'll share my ones too with them.

In recent years my fav games for Xmas have always been Assassins Creed, yeah I've got a tad disappointed the way the story for me seems to have fell on its ass, but I get them every year for Xmas and only one of the very few that I'll buy the season passes for every game (we'll at least the extra missions etc, not interested in packs).


FD
 
Bought Nintendo online yearly subscription in my Switch. I'm going a little retro at the moment, playing some DK, Zelda, Kirby, etc, on the SNES switch service.
I will explore some NES games latter.

For the moment I am playing the best videogame, humanity ever created (my taste of course) :D
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IMG_20201226_100148.jpg
 
Had a go at Ghost of Tsushima, a bit on Christmas eve, and then last night. Was going to have a good session yesterday but then something came up I had to deal with. I am playing on the normal starting difficulty and it's quite hard! Also some of the controls are a bit counter-intuitive. Tap triangle to break shield? Yeah I will get used to it. I like where the story is going, so far at least.
 
Still playing Cyberpunk 2077 but I have also purchased Pga Tour 2k21 and I'm having a lot of fun with it, it's definitely better than the previous version and it's great that the difficulty is highly customizable.
Next purchase will be either P5 Royal or Ghost of Tsushima but I don't think I'll go with the latter, quite burnt already with open world games.
 
Been playing SpiderMan.
Game is very similar to the original - obviously.

I do prefer the story in this though compared to the original.
It is also a shit load easier than the original, being able to camouflage and use venom punch, makes pretty much every battle pretty easy.
The original, I died all the time till I got the black and gold suit, on Mile Moreles I have barely died.

Graphically as well, I have been incredibly disappointed it looks barely any different to the PS4 Pro version.
There are a few more completely gormless people on the streets and there is some very badly implemented Ray Tracing.
But the low res textures are still there and this is anything but a new gen experience.

Also tried my hand at the new talked about game Phasmophobia, that is an incredibly weird but addictive game.
 
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fear said:
Still playing Cyberpunk 2077 but I have also purchased Pga Tour 2k21 and I'm having a lot of fun with it, it's definitely better than the previous version and it's great that the difficulty is highly customizable.
Next purchase will be either P5 Royal or Ghost of Tsushima but I don't think I'll go with the latter, quite burnt already with open world games.
Click to expand...
I'm really diggin' Tsushima but it is a very standard open world game, probably best for you to just wait a few months, it will be cheap by then and well worth checking out.
 
Almost Chrimbo again fellas

My current schedule for the season:
Spider-Man Miles Morales
Probably some Far Cry 6 with my mate
Maybe finish Deathloop, I was near the end and had cleared the level of every enemy when it decided to crash, and it put me off the game for weeks.
Hitman 3: Seven Deadly Sins, if they do the right thing and discount the DLC in the Christmas sales.
If Hitman fails I might finally get to The Outer Wilds.
 
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