So what was your Christmas gaming 2022 like?

I am far too old to get holiday presents let alone video games, but I was alone this Christmas (I'm Jewish so it's not that I was avoiding family celebrations) and decided to do some gaming. I was going to try to make some progress on games I am hoping to complete before the end of the year but another Jewish friend called me and wanted to check out Human Fall Flat, which I'd never played but we'd both bought in the latest PSN sale to play together. We went through the first five levels and mostly had fun, though we were both getting a bit irritated towards the end with how touchy the controls can be (we probably should have called it after 4 levels.) Still it was a good time and was the highlight of my Christmas, which was only otherwise notable because I broke up a fist fight between a couple of strangers on the sidewalk.

If you did get games for Christmas what did you get? If not, did you play anything? Any fun Jackbox times with family? Anyone just sink into a long RPG? Any Christmas gaming traditions like Christmas Nights or Die Hard Arcade?

I played Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous all day today, and the past few days. I have to say, for the sequel to a kickstarted RPG that was fairly milquetoast and generic (Kingmaker), I must say WotR is really well done and engrossing, with really good writing and seemingly ever-expanding scope in both mechanics and story. It's hooked me pretty good.

The weather has brought me a rolling train of disasters for Christmas but in the middle of dealing with them I've been playing a lot of River City Girls 2 which is precisely the kind of dumb video game ass video game I need to relax to at the moment.

Both kids fell asleep at the same time, which let me continue checking out WarTales. After watching Dave Lang play it during Extra Life, I was pretty intrigued by what it’s doing. I’ve quickly found myself in a Crusader Kings-style self-made crisis in the game, so I’ll probably take a fresh whack at it when the newborn is sleeping more reliably.

Been stuck inside the last couple of days due to a blizzard. Christmas day was the first day I could step outside without a considerable risk to my wellbeing, so most of the day was spent shoveling waist high snow. Didn't play much of anything today as a result. Played some Guardians of the Galaxy for a bit. Slowly making my way through that. Did my Overwatch daily challenges, which went pretty smoothly. I think I won three or four games in a row as tank and jumped up, like, three whole ranks in competitive.

I did manage to finish Ghostwire: Tokyo while trapped inside. Thinking it might make a number 10 spot on my GOTY list.

EDIT: Oh. I did get this pack of PlayStation playing cards. It comes in a cool PS1 tin, but the cards themselves kind of suck. The card art is pretty uninspired, and the fact that they come in four different color sets instead of the two standard of red and black makes playing some games unnecessarily more complicated.

Worked (bartended) so most of my gaming was managing the temperaments of wayward souls both familiar and strange dropping in to vent about extended family members. Did manage to hit a slow period where I realized once you find some OP builds in Vampire Survivors doesn’t mean they’re inevitable forever more (I only just started playing about a week ago when I heard The Besties mention it was free on iOS) which was kind of a relief because if those 10 minutes had stretched to 30 it might’ve affected my situational awareness.

I have been playing Trackmania 2 on PC as I wanted to relive my teenhood memories.

Basically, I have been playing GOW: Ragnarok during the holidays so far. Got the game a couple of days after launch and put some hours in it. But I stopped playing it until now, because I didn't want to quickly finish it. I'm glad to see that the game is actually longer than GOW 2018 and has some good side quest. My gaming list is pretty full, so I'll be busy well into the New Year before the new releases start to roll around.

Apex and Deathsmiles mostly. Boring picks but it's my comfort food.

Someone also bought me an online connected dart board. I'm going to give that a go once I figure out how and where to mount it. I'm not really a darts guy, but it seems like a fun addition to my gaming stuff.

I picked up the A-10C II for DCS with the intention of getting it working on an Xbox controller... so i've spent the last few days slowly figuring that out.

Chilled indoors, drank whiskey and eggnog, and watched my older bro play spider man morales and something called Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes... an early version of it anyway. Altogether pretty cozy.

About six hours of Elden Ring, played through Wavetale and then a bit of Lego Builder's Journey. Might get some Doom in tomorrow.

made the trek to the parents'; thusly it was a Switch situation. and now to evoke an obsolete meme:

tired: Paper Mario: The Origami King. i've taken down all but 2 of the ribbons/subareas and sweet jesus i'm praying for relief. i'm told this game is 25ish hrs long, the Switch tells me i've put in 19, but it feels like 300. outstanding visual style, but the the combat got old 18hrs ago and the writing while fun isn't enough. i'll see it through, though.

wired: Nintendo Switch Sports with the niece and nephew. i never had a wii, so bowling and golf are a big hit this holiday season with the family.

didn't get anything to play. my fiancee had ordered me that razer ps5 controller for xmas hoping it would help with the whole hand pain issues the dualsense gives me but it came early n it was a bit too large of a form factor for it to be comfortable in my hands , lighter and lacking in the features compared to a dualsense yet somehow bulkier cause of the shape... needless to say the thought was nice but we sent that back for a refund.

playing games-wise i played kynseed. it was in early access for a few good years n i bought it 2? years back cause the roadmap showed promise. sadly outside of the first few hours , really up till just after the tutorial opening all the charm that was there died n in turn your left with an overly simple slog of a game. if that had more to it either mechanically or story wise what it comes to npcs they really could have had something special there , but the pacing is dreadful and in the end i beat it today at shy of 90 hours when the magic was well past gone at 20 and i edited my saves to basically fast forward away busywork by what probably would have been at least another bad 10 hours of back n forth. the ending was fully lack luster complete with a 'final boss' that was easier than most of the combat otherwise in the game , not that that was hard but due to how it was handled it made it easier to just fight a boss vs trek to the end of X amount of battle dungeons with 1-4 enemies in each battle. the only real bright side to my time was catching up on jeff Gs solo podcasts i'd been behind on since playing twopoint campus this summer.


outside of that the holiday itself was kinda ehh . i honestly forgot it was even here till day of x-mas eve when it was a oh yeah i should probably call my father back today thing. yesterday we did presents , which i thought we were gonna wait on cause my sister's kids were coming today , my mother was happy with the panda robe i got her , she got me a sloth heating pad thing n my fiancee a meat/cheese thing. my grandmother with dementia mostly sat there happy with what she got for the split second she realized there was even something there. ... today the kids were happy tho , my elder nephew i got a switch copy of FFX/X-2 for n he seemed super excited to that made me happy , the younger one whated cars n didn't seem happy when he unwrapped it but whatever he asked for it , and my 13yro neice i got a hairless cat knickknack that she was happier to get than i expected so that was cool since when it got here it was less impressive that the amazon pic . my sister was a sneak n got me a sloth tea infuser which i debated buying myself for a handful of years so that was nice. tho not i feel bad for not getting her anything, tho i guess the kids add up so its fair lol.

needless to say as unfestive as i've felt it hasn't been the worst yr i guess all things considered.

I had a long trip when God of War Ragnarok was released then proceeded to get pretty sick when I came back. I never got to log a lot of time until this past weekend. For work I got Fri,Sat,Sun, and today off (I'm spending the holiday alone as well). So it's just been a constant rotation of GoW, reading, catching up on movies and Mob Psycho 100. I think I've logged 18 hours with God of War over the past 4 days and have been enjoying my time.

Actually been playing through God of War (2018) throughout the season. Other than that just a bit of Vampire Survivors when there is not enough time to really get invested in something larger.

Christmas Day itself I didn't really play anything though. We had family in so the cleaning, cooking, etc kind of took all the energy out of me. Basically just had a drink or two after they left and called it an evening.

As for gifts, I did get a couple things that were gaming related. Jojo's Allstar Battle R and No More Heroes 3 for PS5 as well as a new 4K Web Cam and USB hub for helping with streams. Beyond that it was drum stuff. Looking forward to getting my new drum thrown with a backrest set up because oh boy do long sessions kill the back sometimes.

Decided to finally get deeper into Death Stranding. Really enjoying it so far, I'm probably 3 hours in.

Finished up Lil Gator Game and played a bit of Super Mario Galaxy too. Might've started something else too if I would've had the whole week off, but nah, back to work already.

The Witcher 3, osu!, Blade and Sorcery, and Vampire Survivors. Been having a lot of fun with them all!

Also finally got around to playing through The Devil in Me with a group of friends on the two nights prior to xmas which was nice.

I have been getting into Retro gaming despite a few years thinking I "never" would get into that. So this Holiday I have been working on putting Project Eris on a used Playstation Classic Mini. Emulation on PC is great, but I wanted a portable unit

I have about 50 PSX games and I been very slowly and cheaply adding to my collection. I have been buying loosies from eBay for $4 to $5. Over the years, I had sold off or traded about 100 PSX games; now I wish I had kept them. Certainly, I wish I has bought used games from the bins at KB Toys and EB games back in the day when they were dirt cheap.

Twenty five years ago, I was not thinking that in 2022 I could rip and ISO off a disc and then play it at 8x resolution w/ texture and gemonery fixes. I do not play retro games at 1:1 which is why I never considered them seriously or old games seriously, but cleaned-up and running at 16x drive speed old games are - dare I say- good.

Was out of town for the holidays so my gaming was basically only Vampire Survivors on mobile for a week straight. Can’t complain though, even in that format that game is a true joy.