Santa Claus is a man of excellent taste. No matter who he’s buying for, he always gets it right. Sometimes he lives up to a promise and gets you exactly the video game you wanted. Sometimes he goes rogue and gets you something you never even heard of, and it turns out to be the best game ever. Coincidentally, this usually happens in years when your mom sees the box art for Dead or Alive and tells you not to get your hopes up, but that’s probably unrelated.
While Santa occasionally drops a Lee Carvalho’s Putting Challenge down your chimney when all you wanted was Bonestorm, most of the time he’s dead on. So how did the man develop such fantastic tastes? As we settle down with whatever new video game Santa brought us this year, let’s look at the video games beloved by the man himself.
Hitman
Hitman can get into any building undetected, like Santa. Hitman’s iconic colours are red and white, framed by black, like Santa. Hitman is a man, like Santa. The last one is a bit of a stretch but you can see why jolly old Saint Nick has such an affinity with Agent 47.
There’s even Christmas DLC in Hitman, or as Santa calls it, Regular DLC. It’s maybe a little more violent than you’d expect from the jolly fat man, but everyone needs to blow off some steam. If Santa does that by crushing unsuspecting victims inside a wine press, what’s the harm?
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
I’ve never fully understood the genre of video game best described as ‘pretend to work at a different job when you get home from your real job’. But maybe if, like Santa, I only worked a single day a year, I would see the appeal.
Rudolph with his nose so bright is all well and good, but did you know that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 comes with advanced yaw manipulation and delamination compression customisation? Did you also know that I made all that up because I have no idea how to fly a plane? Santa did. He knows everything. And he loves relaxing with a bit of Microsoft Flight Sim.
Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer
Made in conjunction with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, the pair even shared the same logo, apart from all the letters being different. Except Pro, I guess. Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX was another. So why would Santa be playing the least memorable of the X-Games era of video games? Well, when you think about it, Santa is quite rude. He could give out presents any day of the year, but he deliberately chooses Christmas. That’s Jesus’ day. It’s in the name. He’s clearly desperate to one-up Jesus, and Kelly Slater is his best chance of repeating Jesus’ most famous miracle of walking on water.
If you remember this game, I like you.
Final Fantasy
Is there anyone here who didn’t get a Final Fantasy game for Christmas at one point in their lives? Kris Kringle is a fiend for turn-based JRPGs, and he has so many he’s literally giving them away. As development cycles increase and Final Fantasy is at risk of losing its place at the top of the JRPG charts, Santa might need some new tactics. V-Bucks for everyone!
Diablo 4
Santa is the face of the organisation, and loves to soak up the limelight, but does very little work. Faceless underlings in his factories toil away trying to make sense of the business model – Give our products away for free? To children? – and fixing all his mistakes, taking their glory for himself and hiding away whenever any actual work is to be done. In unrelated news, Elon Musk claimed he was the world’s best Diablo 4 player this year.
