It wouldn’t be Christmas without some festive-themed gaming events.
While not quite on the traditional scale of family viewing as Home Alone, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Die Hard (yes it’s a Christmas movie. Fight me!), Christmas gaming events have become a fairly important and fun element of the Holiday season.
Unfortunately, gaming doesn’t seem to have its Die Hard equivalent: there doesn’t appear to be one game that is universally regarded as the game to play around Christmas time.
Now I’m sure that varies from person to person, and there’s no doubt that people have one game they go back to over this period purely for nostalgic reasons.
But as far as games with a Christmas backdrop and/or setting go, we’re limited to timed gaming events as opposed to one specific game that we can all admit is, in some regard, a “Christmas” title.
Thankfully, there’s still plenty of festive cheer going on in the gaming scene at this time of year, and with every new Holiday season it appears as though more and more developers are getting involved, which is great!
So which Christmas gaming events should you jump into this year? Let’s take a look!
GTA Online
GTA Online will once again be getting a festive makeover, with Rockstar having led the way for Christmas-themed shenanigans in the insanely-popular open-world multiplayer game.
Last year’s event added new masks and clothes, along with a hoard of additional seasonal updates.
There were the standard bad Santa and Christmas costumes, as well as some masks and other Christmas-themed accessories and clothes to buy.
This year’s GTA Online event is expected to be similar, with festive pyjamas and even Christmas-themed ammo and sticky bombs reportedly on the way.
There’s also a fireworks launcher planned for New Year celebrations.
Snow and Christmas trees will add a little more of an aesthetic charm to Los Santos, with Rockstar typically switching it on and off at random. Once it’s on, players can engage in ruthless snowball battles.
Destiny
Destiny‘s The Dawning event is essentially the return of the Sparrow Racing League, adding in two new tracks in Mercury and Felwinter Peak, along with the tracks included in last year’s events.
Players will also get access to new armor for their Guardians, as well as new racing gear to be earned.
Three new Strikes are being added for PvE players, including the Nexus, which adds new enemies and gameplay mechanics.
Gift boxes promise to offer up some exciting treasures and treats for playing during the event, while the Strike scoring system will add new medals for different achievements and bounties.
New Exotics, Gear and Ornaments are also being added, and fans can expect the return of fan-favourite from Year 1, the Icebreaker, as part of the update.
New versions in both void and solar variations of the Thunderlord will also be up for grabs, as will some new Ornaments.
There’s also a stack of gameplay tweaks and aesthetic additions that are sure to make Destiny one of the must-play titles over the Holiday break.
World Of Warcraft
World of Warcraft celebrates Christmas on a yearly basis with the Winter Veil event.
It generally spans two and a half weeks, leading into the end of December, and ending just before New Year’s Eve.
Players can always look forward to an event that is rich in festivities and celebrations, with a spectacular opening-of-the-presents event held on December 25 in Ironforge and Orgrimmar under the Christmas Trees.
Those two locations are actually where a majority of the Winter Veil event takes place, with some activities also happening around the Alterac Mountains area, as well as the capital cities.
Many different gifts, tools and resources are up for grabs: anything from achievements, to many a vanity item, to pets can be rewarded as Christmas gifts.
Christmas really is a great time to be in Azeroth.
Call Of Duty
Both Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered are celebrating Christmas.
They’ve received some rather festive updates recently, with Modern Warfare Remastered having received the remaining maps from the original game — all for free — which brings the total number of maps in the game to 16.
Hardpoint and Gun Game modes have also been added, while the Crash map is now Winter Crash, and it will have a 24/7 playlist on December 20.
In Infinite Warfare, a new three-round burst pistol, the Hailstorm-Thunder, will be joined by the Genesis Holiday, which is, as you might imagine, a Christmas-themed version of the game mode.
It will get its own 24/7 playlist as well, while the 12 Days Of Winter promotion will kick off almost two weeks of festive fun, starting December 21.
Various Christmas-themed bonuses will be up for grabs, and players will simply need to log on before January 21, 2017 in order to receive their gifts.
Overwatch
Overwatch fans will be greeted by the game’s third and final seasonable event of the year.
Winter Wonderland is a holiday-themed event, with plenty of news skins, emotes, sprays, and victory poses coming your way.
It will run until January 2, giving us three straight weeks of festive-themed cheer in one of the year’s best shooters.
The event adds more than 100 new cosmetic items in total, as well as some aesthetic changes to a number of maps to add some additional Christmas cheer.
There’s also a new brawl coming: Mei’s Snowball Offensive.
For a full run-down of Overwatch‘s Christmas event, check out our Winter Wonderland guide.
Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go celebrates it first Christmas with a number of big updates.
Togepi and Pichu have been added, along with a host of other Pokemon from Gen 2.
Niantic says more Pokemon will be added in the near future, but it’s this recent update with a Santa-dressed Pikachu that is particularly fitting considering the time of year.
You have until December 29 to catch this Pikachu, so best you get catchin’!
Niantic says it’s a fairly common Pokemon, so as long as you’re playing Pokemon Go, you shouldn’t have any issues catching it.
For more information about the recent Pokemon Go update, check out our hatching guide.
Which Christmas-themed event will you be playing this Holiday season?