Most people have favorites like Skyrim or snow levels in games like Super Mario 64. Well since I’m weird af mine is Half-Life (1) on the ps2. I first played it around Christmas in the 2000’s, the exact date I rented it escapes me. So this year I’m feeling nostalgic again and fired it up in PCSX2 with native mouse and keyboard support.
It’s a pretty good port all things considered, if you don’t want to pay Valve money or pirate a copy from somewhere. Vimm’s has it in their catalogue of games.
They’re waiting for you Gordon, in the test. chamber.
Honestly amazed no one answered Disco Elysium
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Fallout new vegas because patrolling the mojave…
I really like playing the Long Dark, I love the atmosphere. The crunchy snow, the northern lights, the wind howling outside when you’re in a shelter… it is also my favourite survival game mechanically and has a good story mode
Oooh i need to pick this one up again
Got into it myself recently. Smoke coming out of the chimney when you have a fire going inside was also
Saaame its my yearly winter game! That and vintage story
In the winter of 2002 I was working a shit ass job across town that ended after midnight, and buses only ran to a bit under two miles away from my place. Temperatures went down to about -30°F pretty regularly, and the sidewalks were never cleared, so the walk home was absolute hell. BUT, there was a 7-11 halfway home where the staff didn’t give a shit, so I could get like a cup of cheese sauce free with my buck fifty nacho tray, and it warmed me up enough to get home.
Then I’d get home, crank a space heater to max, huddle under a blanket mountain, and play Metroid Prime or Animal Crossing until the morning. I do that every winter now.
Animal Crossing reminds me of winter cause most of them released in late fall before New Horizons and I got GameCube animal crossing on day 1. NH fucking sucks and I sold my copy soon after buying it along with a switch but ive been playing emulated New Leaf for like 5 years now. I just like doing my game chores and talking to Bob and Eugene
i usually do a run of Super Metroid around this time of year
Same bestie
I do super in the summer. Fusion was my winter metroid now its that and dread. Super snd zero mission are summer metroids. Fusion and Dread have a blue vibe, Zebes feels orange
i think it’s a sound thing to me, super is a fairly quiet and lower-pitched game, a warm thing for a muffled snow day
The cozy winter vibes in the original Animal Crossing are hard to beat.
For fucking real! Im gonna dolphin that up! I work in a kitchen at a fancy place and have been working so fucking hard and hate Christmas. It ruins winter.
not really winter themed, but i usually play digimon world around this time of year
Does rewatching Twin Peaks over and over and spiraling mountains as a video game? Cause I do that every winter.
I tend to replay either horror games around this time of year, or Max Payne, usually the second. Last year, i’m pretty sure I went through The Thing, since it was re-released on pc with a bunch of bugfixes and graphic updates. That was awesome. I also always wait until the first single-digit temp night of the year to rewatch The Thing. its just a ritual I have.
if i’m with my bros around the holidays we also usually try to bust out an old multiplayer classic, like goldeneye 64 or bomberman 64. something we can scream at each other about all night
Was gonna say max payne 1 here, the snow everywhere really brings it together.
last time i tried to get mp1 running on my pc, it had this insane audio glitch that just kept replaying like, a trashcan falling down or something repeatedly and it would never end. pretty sure i read there’s some patches and stuff to fix the issues but i didn’t have the time to finagle 'em so i just didn’t. i probably should replay it here soon, but i was hoping TGA would show off some of the Max Payne remake stuff in addition to Control 2.
Oh I played horror games around Halloween for the first time this year. More spooky themed then horror I played Dredge and No Im not a Human. I might look for some spooky games again Halloween 2026 and maybe make it something I do each year.
loved dredge. so fun and so cute
oh yeah its a fun and chill slowburn
Either one of the Elder Scrolls, one of the Fallouts, Cyberpunk or some Rockstar game. Currently waiting on a modlist for FNV to update so I can play that again.
FNV is great and modding it is such a pain. Although, I recently spent far longer than I’d like to admit wrestling with it, just trying to get one specific mod working, which takes the Fallout parodies of the Cold War to an interesting logical conclusion and lets you join a communist party, complete with damn good satire of leftist infighting. I’ve also had a lot of fun with a Great Patriotic War faction overhaul, significantly better than the Soviet NCR mod I’d used prior to that one. See, you think you just want to add one thing, then there’s other stuff that works well with that thing, and next thing you know you’ve got a rat’s nest of dependencies and the bloody Script Extender AKA recipe for even more volatility and crashes. Basically, I’ve managed to break things in a way that it will inevitably crash a certain amount of time into the save or the session, no matter what progress I do or don’t make, and once it crashes once that save file is busted and loading it will lead to an immediate crash or a crash within minutes.
I gave up and put it aside indefinitely when I reached the point of frustration and hopeless desperation where I was more likely to put a hole through a wall than actually solve anything.
Stardew Valley is my obvious go-to, get cooped up and cozy and wistful. But for real deep winter, I’ll even sometimes want a more original Harvest Moon, the NES/GBA versions were janky, but I just remember them getting the Winter vibe so on-point, and played them so much while covered in blankets.
The perfect vibes of cold and still and calm and a little magical.
If anyone is into visual novels and is looking for something to play on Christmas, try VA-11 Hall-A. It’s a cozy game about being a bartender in a cyberpunk city during Christmas, and it has some actual gameplay too, you have to listen to what your customers want and make the drinks in a simple mini-game.
Isn’t that the one with the
CW: pedophilia
child sex bot
They explore the renovations of that fairly well if I recall correctly.
It’s not like the game is promoting/excusing pedophilia, it just acknowledges that in a world with sentient child-like androids with adult minds, some of them would definitely become prostitutes, because there is a market for that in a fucked up cyberpunk city. The only character in the game that represents them does not talk about her gross pedo clients.
Mild story spoiler
There’s just one guy whose daughter died and he pays a prostitute to pretend to be his daughter for a day. Beyond that Dorothy does not get into details about her work.
disco elysium
i first played it maybe 3 winter breaks from college ago, and by the time the next break rolls around im always like, “im bored with nothing to play, i kinda forget everything about disco elysium so ill replay it really quick” and at this point i might as well do it every year
i didnt even scroll down to see the other disco elysium comments LOL
I usually end up in a Frostpunk mood when the weather starts getting cold. Still haven’t played the second one lol
So my Christmas games are usually Paradox games, since they get a ton of updates throughout the year. But in the period between Christmas and mid January, they are basically frozen in time. So, its a perfect time to play my map painters. This year, well play EU5 and return to Vicky 3.
Mind you I play these games all throughout the year but Christmas time is a focused effort for me cause I have like 20 days off.
