Ah, Christmas 2016 — a strange yuletide, indeed!
If you weren’t there yourself, it can be easy to forget how bad 2016 felt to live through. A bunch of beloved celebrities — ranging from Carrie Fisher to David Bowie — passed away. Everything became politicized in a way it hadn’t been through the first half of the decade, and the two leading presidential candidates were deeply unpopular. The internet hated the lady Ghostbusters! Harambe was shot! Clowns were everywhere!
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On the happier side of things, this was the first Christmas after I got back into games after finishing college. Until then, I had been catching up on older games that were available for PS3 or GameCube. I played The Last of Us, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Resident Evil 4, and so many others. But, as I got deeper into gaming, I really needed to get with the times.
So, a PS4 was my number one request for Christmas, and given that this was a few years into that generation of consoles, it wasn’t as bank-breaking as it otherwise would have been. I can look at the broader landscape and see what other people had under the tree, but I want to start with the best game I had under mine.
Uncharted 4
I’d been playing Naughty Dog’s Indiana Jones-inspired action-adventure series since the original game arrived on PS3 in 2007, but it was my experience with The Last of Us a few months before that kicked my excitement for Uncharted 4 into overdrive.
I couldn’t help myself but play through the whole 15-20 hour experience in just a couple days, pulling an all-nighter to get through the game before I had to be back at work in early January. That wasn’t the best way to play this game but, when I returned to it in 2022 with the Legacy of Thieves Collection remaster, it became an all-time favorite. If you love cinematic video game storytelling, Crash Bandicoot references, and pirate paradises, this is the perfect Christmas present.
Incredible Stealth Games
2016 gave us the return of Dishonored and a reboot of Hitman. Both ruled. Dishonored 2 added a second campaign (and a second set of powers) to the robust immersive sim foundation laid by Arkane’s original, while transporting the action to Karnaca, a Mediterranean-inspired setting that was much sunnier than the original’s Dunwall, but just as seedy.
Hitman brought Agent 47 back in an episodic format that gave players an excuse to play, then play again, then play again, each new sprawling map. Discovering each secret (and each kill technique) would have kept anyone who got Hitman for Christmas busy until Valentine’s Day at least.
A Gift Card For All Those Indies
In the 2000s and 2010s, players were increasingly playing indie games that had no physical version available in stores. You couldn’t exactly ask your parents for Newgrounds games at the start of the millennium, and in the 2010s, half of the games you wanted to play were similarly ephemeral.
In 2016 alone, players got some of the indies that would define the scene going forward. Stardew Valley, Inside, Firewatch, The Witness, Hyper Light Drifter, Superhot (more on this one in a minute), BoxBox Boy, Thumper, Virginia, Quadrilateral Cowboy, Overcooked, Abzu, Enter the Gungeon, Darkest Dungeon, and Oxenfree are all good, often important, and most didn’t get physical releases at launch.
A Whole Bunch Of Shooters
I’ve complained about the death of the single-player first-person shooter as a reliable staple of triple-A gaming in the past, and I probably will again in the future. But if the FPS campaign has been killed, 2016 was its last stand. And it was glorious. That year gave us Doom, Titanfall 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Battlefield 1, Superhot, and Far Cry Primal.
Also the extremely unpopular Metroid Prime: Federation Force, but we don’t talk about that.
Most of these games deserve to get their own section. Doom reinvented the iconic FPS series with visceral, gory kills. Titanfall 2 has the best shooter campaign since Half-Life 2, and ‘Effect and Cause‘ is one of the best levels of the 2010s. Despite fan frustration with the series’ increasingly futuristic entries, Infinite Warfare is one of COD’s better campaigns.
Superhot might be the most innovative shooter of the millennium so far. Overwatch is one of the most popular games of the last decade, and changed the trajectory of shooters forever. If you got any of these under your tree, you’d be in for a great time — even if it meant locking yourself away in your room with a headset on instead of enjoying time with your family.
Pokemon Go Sing Carols
Of course, for many gamers, Christmas 2016 mainly involved checking their phone during family dinner and seeing that, no, there are not any Pokemon to catch in their grandparents’ house out in the middle of nowhere. Might as well check again, though.