How’s your holiday season been this year? Good? Did you enjoy the sales? I hope you found one great gift for a loved one and maybe seven or eight games for yourself. Come on. Let’s be honest with each other about how these things work. If you went on Steam and only bought digital presents for your friends, then you are a far better person than I. Yet, all this aside, I love the Christmas season.
It’s my favorite time of the year, probably because I live far from my parents and don’t have children. Unfortunately, Christmas is also the time of the year I’m reminded of perhaps the biggest problem facing humanity at the moment: we need way better Christmas games. We deserve them.
Yes, I Know Christmas Games Exist
Now, you might be saying, “But, Mike, there already are a few classic games that take place around Christmas.” And this is true! Lots do! Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Parasite Eve, Bayonetta 2, Shenmue, and some Yakuza games happen around Christmas. That’s a lot. Dead Rising 4 has lights and Santa material in it, although I believe that game takes place after a zombie apocalypse that happened during the holidays, so that only barely counts.
Get off my back about it. Plenty of Fallout games feature Halloween decorations because the in-game nuclear war happened at the end of October. This does not make it a Halloween game. I draw the boundaries here, not you.
I love these games – well, I’m okay with Dead Rising 4 – and I love seeing a villain use mitochondria to light an entire opera audience on fire just a few blocks away from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. But they’re not quite entirely Christmas games. They’re snowy and festive, but it’s not like you’re going back to your small town and falling in love with a hot snowman. They’re more like Die Hard.
Sure, you can claim it’s technically a Christmas movie because of the chilly time of year and Bruce Willis writes ‘ho-ho-ho’ on a dead guy. I both think it’s funny to call Die Hard a Christmas movie and somewhat annoying when it’s included on a list of Christmas movies. We all contain multitudes. But I’m not here for that argument. I’m here to make a demand that’s completely pointless during the one blessed time of year in which pointlessness is celebrated.
Some Are Even True Christmas Games
And to be even more fair, there are a few good Christmas games. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage is essentially the video game version of Weird Al’s The Night Santa Went Crazy. That fits the bill. It’s all about Christmas, even if it’s cleaning up after Santa lost his mind. There’s also always Christmas Nights, which wasn’t even that big of a game. It was meant to promote the Sega Saturn, that poor guy.
The Saturn is the Tiny Tim of games, except in this scenario, Scrooge never turned good and Tiny Tim’s chair remained empty, if you get my drift. And, yes, a few games, like Saints Row 4, have DLC that are Christmas-themed. Which is cool, but feels more like a TV show having a “very special” episode.
What I want more of are pure, unadulterated Christmas games that don’t suck. The ones above don’t suck! But if you look online for Christmas video games or – surprisingly worse – board games, you come up with a lot of cheap cash grabs. True, you could argue that Christmas as a holiday is about cheap cash grabs. But go do yourself a disservice and search Steam or the Switch eShop for Christmas games.
It’s half corny adult games where you put together virtual jigsaw puzzles of sexy ladies in red hats and half mini-game collections for kids that were programmed by someone who hates children and Christmas alike. Both should be boiled in their own puddings with a stake of holly through their hearts. Nor am I forgetting the occasional Christmas movie video game adaptation. Yes, there’s a Polar Express game for the Game Boy Advance. No, it’s not worth playing, even if you don’t respect yourself.
Nothing Captures The Feeling Of Christmas
Let me put it this way: there are a few Grinch games, but not one really captures the feeling of sneaking into a house and stealing presents and then having to redistribute those presents. I’m sure there’s an indie title somewhere, but I’ve yet to find a Christmas romance game that feels like a Hallmark movie and not just a visual novel where the other characters are turned on by literally anything you say or do. I’m sure there are games like I want out there, but I wish they were more common. More popular this time of year. Small, bite sized experiences for the holidays. Hell, give me a digital advent calendar that’s not just AI-generated ‘spot the item in the image’ dreck.
I recognize that Christmas games are a bit tricky because games are made for international audiences and – believe it or not – a lot of cultures don’t celebrate the birth of the Christ child. I also know that filming a made-for-TV-movie Christmas movie on the cheap isn’t the same as developing a video game in terms of time or scale. Although, to belabor the point, I think we’d all be fine if Christmas games were cheap and short. Sweet experiences. Something that helps me share in the holiday spirit.
And maybe that’s what I’m missing. Something that celebrates the joy of the real holiday and horror of the holidays, not just the aftermath of Santa’s murder spree. Accidentally giving someone an awful gift at a work white elephant exchange. Talking to your family about your new partner without giving specific details so they can’t be found online. Wrapping gifts and tearing them open. I don’t just want games that take place during Christmas.
I don’t just want games where someone wears a Santa hat in a scene and embarrasses their family. I want more games about Christmas itself. Not the religious stuff! Let’s be honest, that’s a loose thread in the holiday and – to be historically accurate, always has been. But games about giving. Receiving. Awkwardness. Singing carols. Checking lists. Checking them twice. Asking someone out. Getting a no. Give me the Love Actually of games!
Again, I understand why this isn’t going to happen. And, if anything, I need to dig deeper to find the hidden Christmas gems that do exist. I’ll search around and I’m open to suggestions. But, folks, our greatest Christmas-themed game for years was Elf Bowling. That was the top of the line. We can do better. We must do better. For Santa.
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OpenCritic
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Top Critic Rating:
85/100
- Released
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November 12, 2020