The holidays produced a mosaic of comfort plays and curious experiments across PC Gamer’s staff, a quiet confession of what games feel like home when the year finally slows down. The mix is recognizably familiar—revisiting old favorites, dipping into indie oddities, and welcoming a few new titles that spark curiosity—yet it also hints at broader shifts in taste: pacing, narrative scope, and how players balance solo objectives with social play. Taken together, the holiday picks sketch a culture where nostalgia and exploration sit side by side, guiding expectations for the year ahead.
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor, leaned into strategy comfort food, returning to a long-running Ironman campaign in XCOM 2 with the War of the Chosen expansion and its DLC suite. The campaign’s brutal, methodical tempo remains engrossing, with alien threats registering as old acquaintances after years away. The prospect of a potential new horizon—Star Wars Zero Company—hangs in the wings, but for Valentine the core appeal is the enduring tension and clever design of a game that still stands tall among modern strategy releases. It’s not just about finishing a year; it’s about reaffirming why the game remains a touchstone for the genre.
Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer, kept the break intimate and tactile with Herdling, a compact countryside journey that nevertheless demands constant attention. The player herds twelve Calicorns up a mountain while juggling injuries, blue berries, and the ever-present threat of bloodthirsty owl creatures. The experience clocks in around three hours, which proved perfect for a single sitting, delivering a neat arc and a sense of emotional attachment to the creatures you shepherd. It’s a reminder that sometimes the strongest holiday games aren’t sprawling epics but tightly wound experiences that reward focus and care.
It may have been easier to wrap up warm and actually venture outside, but Herdling delivered a sense of quiet accomplishment that carried into the new year, leaving Phillips with the confident knowledge she could handle a scenario in which twelve gargantuan yet oddly charming creatures depend on her decisions to reach the end safely.
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer, finally sat with Metaphor: ReFantazio, a spiritual sequel to Persona 5 that relocates the familiar turn-based rhythms into a realm defined by political intrigue and social striving. The game preserves the Persona‑like framework—the bond-building, the party dynamics, the turn-based combat—while casting the journey as a quest to build a more equal world in a fractured fantasy kingdom. Its dungeon design treads familiar ground, and its battle system leans on exploiting enemy weaknesses at times, but the standout elements are the archetype system for builds, a vividly colorful cast, and a tournament‑arc structure that feels unmistakably anime in tone and scale. The aesthetic is a standout too, blending medieval iconography with brutalist architecture and monster design that feels like it stepped out of a 1960s fashion spread.
Bloodlines 2, Vampire: The Masquerade (Image credit: Paradox) Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: The holidays also brought Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 to the table, and it’s a game that earns its stripes despite acknowledged flaws. Chalk calls it a narrative brawler more than a traditional RPG, noting glitches and a finale that lands with a rushed, perhaps unfortunate, rhythm. Yet the combat is visceral and surprisingly satisfying, with a back-alley Seattle pulsing with energy. The story and characters are what ultimately pull you in—the back-and-forth trips between the 1920s and the 2020s keep guessing, and the partnership between Phyre and her cerebral sidekick Fabien emerges as one of the game’s stronger threads. It isn’t a flawless sequel, but for Chalk it’s a strong, uneven, nonetheless compelling ride that leaves room for a more ambitious follow-up.
Ball x Pit (Image credit: Devolver Digital) Rory Norris, Guides Writer, needed a simple palate cleanser after heavy action games, and Ball x Pit delivered. The indie roguelike riffs on a Vampire Survivors framework but adds pinball mechanics for a kinetic twist. The core loop tasks players with collecting and upgrading balls during a run to kill enemies before they reach the bottom of the screen, with the added spice of ball-bouncing kinetic energy and wall interactions. The game evolves as you unlock more characters and experiment with ball compositions, including absurd but satisfying pairings like a Bomb ball fused with Poison to create a Nuclear Bomb. It’s a “one more run” kind of title, wrapped inside a small city-building layer where you place structures to harvest resources and unlock upgrades. Norris notes the game’s charm and clever buildcrafting as the ideal antidote to blockbuster fatigue.
Lusternia: Age of Ascension (Image credit: Iron Realms Entertainment) Joshua Wolens, News Writer, returned to Lusternia, a text-based MMO that operates in legacy mode and is run largely by volunteers. In this year’s break, the game’s restraint—no microtransactions, a smaller player base—felt oddly wholesome, a throwback to older online worlds where social play and roleplay carry more weight than performance metrics. Playing as a snake-man Monk, Wolens finds the fantasy setting surprisingly rich and his experiences grounded in simple yet satisfying combat—three attacks per round—within a community that still manages to feel alive despite its modest footprint.
Tant�Cuore (Image credit: Japanime Digital, Wedontknow Games) Jess Kinghorn, Hardware Writer, returned to Tanto Cuore, a deckbuilder built around hiring maids with love cards rather than coins. The aesthetic is adorable, but the mechanics are ruthlessly tactical: each turn adds to your estate or targets rivals, with defensive plays often gobbled up by aggression at the table. The multiplayer tension translates neatly into single-player play, where rival gloating becomes fuel for yet another run. The result is a game that rewards persistence and willingness to be a little bit chaotic—perfect for holiday gaming marathons with friends or family.
Lushfoil Photography Sim (Image credit: Matt Newell) Scott Tanner, Senior Video Producer, turned to Lushfoil Photography Sim for a peaceful, low-stakes escape. The game presents a suite of expansive landscapes to explore and photograph, progressing as new boards unlock and gear—especially the drone—becomes available. It’s a game about pace and composition more than reflex, inviting a calm, almost meditative approach to image-making. The strongest moments come from discovering a portal that hurls the player between locales, turning a virtual walk into a week-long obsession to photograph every vista and weather variation. The author confesses that the game’s lack of varied lenses can be a limitation, but the core loop still sustains long, relaxing sessions.
Fallout 3 (Image credit: Bethesda) Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor, found himself returning to Fallout 3 after years away, balancing it with his ongoing love for Fallout: New Vegas. The nostalgia is strong, but so is the game’s distinct atmosphere—a grimy, desperate world with standout quests and locations like Little Lamplight and the Dunwich Building. Crashes are more frequent here than in New Vegas or other Bethesda titles, but the mood and worldbuilding endure. Litchfield notes that Fallout 3’s mood stands apart from Fallout 4’s polished design, emphasizing a raw, unsettling charm that still resonates.
Kletka (Image credit: Callback, ln404) Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer, found the holiday’s co‑op horror mischief in Kletka, a game that plunges players into the Gigastructure’s backrooms. The elevator descent—teeth overhead and the obligation to feed the Kletka to descend deeper—creates a relentless sense of peril, amplified by resource management and monsters that actively chase players. The experience rewards quick thinking, teamwork, and nerve, delivering a high-tension marathon of multiplayer mayhem with friends on Discord.
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (Image credit: 2K) Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor, revisited The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, the 2013 third-person cover shooter that attempted to fuse XCOM’s strategic sensibilities with a shooter’s tempo. The result is an uneven experience: awkward cover, clumsy sprinting, and a cursor that must be navigated around waist-high walls, all of which undermine its best ideas. The takeaway is less disappointment in a failed experiment than an appreciation for Chimera Squad as a more effective, streamlined way to fuse strategy and action in the XCOM universe.
In sum, the holiday notes map a culture of comfort and curiosity: players lean into familiar rhythms for reassurance while also chasing new textures and ideas that could define 2026. The mix of strategy, narrative richness, and indie experimentation suggests a year where pace, mood, and place matter as much as raw performance metrics. Readers are invited to share their own holiday picks in the comments and join a broader conversation about how culture and opinion in gaming shape the year ahead.