The Laughs of Us | The Snigger

GAMING

BY Euan Scarlett

Happy December Peoples! For many that will mean Xmas and all the surrounding fun shenanigans, but never forget that for all the poor people working in hospitality and retail, this is simply amateur drinkers and major bam season. When you are out shopping or enjoying yourself this season, please pay heed to the hardworking staff helping you and don’t be a cunt.

With that PSA out the way, it’s obviously a perfect time of year to look at games set at or during the silly season itself, as well as look at some suggestions for an alternative to watching your drunk Aunt Maggie’s ill-advised attempt at miming “Fifty Shades of Grey” during the traditional after-dinner game of charades.

First off though – despite this monthly nonsense ostensibly being about videogames, I see no reason not to be occasionally talking about other types of media in tangential reference, so, what would I recommend as the best non-traditional Xmas music to put on for those who, like some of our intrusive thoughts, would happily slap Mariah Carey for singing just the opening note again? Well, thanks for asking.

Obviously, every one of the 18 original Xmas hits on the classic Now Xmas Album from the mid 80s is a banger, but the G.O.A.T. is “Mr Hankey’s Xmas Classics”, the South Park Xmas album, in which Matt and Trey pull no punches and offend just about everyone, Christian or not. Who could forget such seasonal favourites as “The Lonely Jew on Christmas” and “Mr Hankey, the Christmas Poo”? It’s a cold heart indeed that isn’t moved by Hitler’s emotional take on perennial classic “O Tannenbaum”, or that isn’t then warmed as Satan cheers him up stage-musical style with “Christmas Time in Hell”. Warms me every year for sure, your mileage may vary depending on how easily offended you or your Xmas guests are.

Next up is none other than Captain Kirk / TJ Hooker himself, William “The Shat” Shatner and his batshit crazy 2018 Christmas album “Shatner Claus”, which features the Shat and a selection of musical guests including Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Rick Wakeman, Judy Collins and Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, with whom our Shat ‘duets’ on interesting interpretations of traditional Xmas classics. Genuinely amazing, insane and perplexing and possibly the best of all of Shatner’s musical output.

Also - Danny Elfman’s soundtrack for “The Nightmare Before Christmas”;

Adam Sandler’s “The Hannukah Song”;

and Twisted Sister – Twisted Christmas (2007). Just… yes. Banging metal Christmas carols with Dee Snyder, every household deserves a Dee Snyder for Xmas.

Right so you’ve got the tunes out the way so what are the best Xmas games you can play? Whilst there are many many games across all genres that have a snowy or icy level, and several that are set in wintery lands or have an arctic biome, I decided to focus just on games that have specifically Xmas themes or settings.

To start, I will state that Dead Rising 4 is easily the worst of the series, but still has a huge amount of entertainment to be taken from the familiar running around a shopping mall full of zombies using whatever you can find, from golf clubs to giant fish displays as slapstick weapons against the undead army. This time, the apocalypse has happened in December and so the whole game is infused with Christmas cheer - the mall decorated appropriately for the season, Xmas music playing as background to the carnage, and zombies wearing santa hats and suits. There’s even a free download that lets you turn up the Xmas stuff to 11. As previously said, probably not the best Dead Rising to start with in the series as a lot has been dumbed down from what started as quite a clever stupid game, but the Xmas setting does liven it up and it is a lot of fun in small doses. The mini-golf game that was dlc is stupid and entertaining as well, and the game regularly goes on sale at silly cheap prices.

Next we have what is considered the worst in the Batman Arkham series of games, 2013’s Batman: Arkham Origins. Developed by WB Games Montréal rather than the UK’s Rocksteady who are the main series developer, and released as a stop-gap whilst the actual third game in the series, Batman: Arkham Knight would eventually release in 2015. Worst in a series of 4 of the best action games of all time is still pretty good though, and the biggest issue people seem to have with this is that it doesn’t have Batman voiceover GOATS Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker, something that doesn’t matter after about 15 minutes. Anyway, if you enjoyed Batman: Arkham City, arguably the best in the series, this is basically more of the same, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s available on PC and the 360 version is backwards compatible on the Xbox consoles.

The plot this time revolves around a young Batman, not long out of Batman school, who has a bounty placed on his head by villain Black Mask, who you will remember was played onscreen by Scottish man Ewan McGregor in “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)” in 2020. This bounty brings 8 of the world’s top killers to Gotham on Christmas Eve in order to take down the Billionaire Bat Fetishist. Definitely worth your time finding out if they can. The entire game is set on Christmas Eve night, leading into Christmas Day, which is obviously bang on with our seasonal roundup, even with, having checked my completed game save file, Christmas Eve in Gotham city is apparently 67 hours long.

Our third Xmas game is Tom Clancy’s The Division, a looty-shooty game from Ubisoft which can be picked up for around a fiver and is great. Does need online though even if you only want to play on yer own, which is stupid but there you go. You are a member of a ultra ultra secret division of the US secret services who are embedded as normal civilians in the domestic population, to be activated in the event of ‘the shit going down’. Which it does, in New York city, one Black Friday, when a lethal manufactured variation of the flu virus is unleashed on unsuspecting shoppers and the resulting pandemic is like (covid x covid) + Ebola) x the so-called “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1918 to 1920. You are then activated, and get to run around a quite brilliant realistic version of a New York deserted, in the snow, with all the Xmas decorations up already, shooting looters and various other people not following lockdown procedure in the face, baws, fanny or wherever. Then they explode and drop coloured weapons that might be +3 better at shooting baws than the current pew-pew and you equip that so you can shoot more difficult looters etc in the fud and the cycle of loot-filled RNG gambling based violence continues. It’s great and got me through some of the darker moments in the actual pandemic, as you could pretend this fat combat armour-wearing prick shooting at you with the pink UZI was the same one that got the last bottle of antibacterial handwash in Lidl the other day. Therapeutic.

Last but not least is the greatest Christmas game of all time, Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, on the Sega Saturn. For whatever bizarre reason, SEGA decided that a good way to promote sales of their Saturn console at Christmas in 1996 would be to have an exclusive Christmas-themed version of one of the flagship titles for the console, NiGHTS into Dreams, which was the first new non-Sonic related title from the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog since the first Sonic game and highly anticipated. So during summer of 1996 a wee room full of Japanese guys went slowly mad listening to Jingle Bells on repeat. The game is basically a cut down of the full title and features Christmas story and redesigned version of the first level. In Japan it was included as an exclusive title with part of a Christmas bundle, or you could cover postage costs and claim a free copy from SEGA: in the USA and Europe, which the UK was still part of then, the game was free if you bought certain SEGA games or with the purchase of selected SEGA-based magazines, which for the younger readers were sort of like a series of webpages printed on paper which you would have to manually scroll through with your actual hands. I lost my UK copy at some point but managed to get a lovely Japanese copy when I was in Tokyo. It really is a delight and at some point I hope to remember I own it and play it on actual Xmas day.

It goes without saying that all Die Hard games are Christmas games. I especially like the artist’s impression of Bruce Willis on the cover of Die Hard Arcade.

But what do I play if I am forced into social interaction this festive season? you ask. Never fear, we have you covered. There’s actually a whole host of party games that support multiple players each using their mobile phone as a controller, easy to get everyone on board – players simply use the web browser on their phone to connect to the game, then the fun starts!

Absolute top choice for this sort of thing for me has to go to Jackbox Games and their ongoing series ‘Jackbox Party Pack’, which is now up to Party Pack 11 as well as spin-offs “The Jackbox Naughty Pack” and “The Jackbox Survey Scramble”. Each party pack contains 5 games which support varying player numbers, later packs often have sequels or updates to popular game from earlier packs so it is worth starting with Pack 1 if that is important to you but all of these are great. Examples of games are “You Don’t Know Jack!”, a crazed gameshow where “high culture and pop culture collide!”, and player phones are buzzers; “Fibbage”, which presents players with an obscure fact missing one word, players then enter a suggestion on their phone anonymously and then everyone chooses which is the correct answer from a list of all the player answers plus the correct one; and “Quiplash”, aimed at comedians, where random players are given prompts and have to provide the funniest answer, then everyone judges them on which is funnier. The Jackbox packs are available on most formats and regularly discounted, and are absolutely value for money if you think that they sound good fun. You just buy say, Jackbox 5 on PS5 and then run it on the TV and that’s how everyone sees the main screen. For any readers using PC, if you have an EPIC game store account you should be able to claim Jackbox Party Pack 4 for absolutely free from the Epic Games store between Dec 04 and Dec 11 2025, result! You may also be able to log into Amazon’s game service LUNA if you have an Amazon Prime sub, where several similar games using phones as controllers can be played as part of your existing subsctription, including something where you get judged in a courtroom by Snoop Dogg. Sounds ace.

TTFN!

Next month – sober January I expect. Happy Holidays to all of you in reader land, Happy New Year when it comes. See you in 2026!