The soft crackle of a fire in the fireplace. Snow gently falling outside your window. The twinkling of festive lights throughout the neighborhood. The only thing that could complete this image is the glow of your PC’s RGB lights and a cup of hot cocoa.
The holidays are typically seen as an opportunity to reconnect with your family… but for me, they’re also about reconnecting with my favorite games. With Xbox Game Pass, I can take my game collection everywhere I go this season—here are six games I’ll be spending the holidays with.
Fallout 4
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
I devoured every episode of the Fallout TV series when it came out. After it wrapped up, all I wanted to do was head back into the Wasteland and explore to the dulcet sounds of The Ink Spots. Set in an irradiated Boston, you’ll build settlements, kill Deathclaws, and befriend a cast of compelling companions, like our synth buddy Nick Valentine. To me, all of that is secondary to wandering the vast open world, discovering secrets and creatively placed skeletons.
Fallout 4 might be 10 years old, but it’s still a multi-award-winning game that puts you in an immense and varied world. As we said in our review, “It’s a highly customizable RPG in a world that’s packed full of things to do. Its systems are intricate, and invite you to tailor them to your liking. When you do, it can be wonderfully satisfying. Fallout 4 willfully trades immersion for an enjoyable, freeform sandbox of possibilities.” You’ll be walking the Freedom Trail into the new year.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
(Image credit: Funday Games)
Move. Destroy. Level up. Repeat. Boiled down, that’s the recipe for maybe 70%* of all video games. After Vampire Survivors came on the scene in late 2021, the formula was clarified and refined. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor could have been a copycat, hitting the right notes and moving on, but as our review says, “it’s a really confident fleshing out of the structure and features around that excellent core gameplay loop, and the result is that a roguelike I already lost nearly 100 hours to before this final update has its claws firmly in me all over again.” We gave it a review score of 90, placing it among the highest rated games this year.
You play as a dwarf miner with auto-firing weapons and the goal to grab resources, upgrade your gear and smash through hordes of aliens. Unlike the wide-open spaces of Vampire Survivors, you can carve out pathways where your enemies can’t follow. With a rich set of progression systems and a new mission type having been added for the 1.0 release in September, you’ll watch those numbers go up all holiday long.
*Statistic unsubstantiated.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
(Image credit: Activision)
The holidays are all about spending time with friends and family, right? Why not do that while leveling prestige? The latest edition in this historic franchise is being touted as the biggest Black Ops yet, with three game modes to get lost in and over thirty multiplayer maps, including modern cityscapes (Toshin), near-frontier environments (Homestead) and classic hits (Nuketown 2025).
Get your crew together and experience the co-op campaign mode to get your feet under you. After that, hop into multiplayer or the nightmarish Zombies mode. It’s one of the kings of multiplayer first-person shooters for a reason. With each mode featuring several twists on the standard formula, Black Ops 7 will help put some havoc in your holidays.
Age of Mythology: Retold
(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)
Real-time strategy games used to be my go-to genre. From Command & Conquer: Red Alert to StarCraft, I spent countless hours building and battling. That’s why I was thrilled to see the return of one of the best in Age of Mythology: Retold. A contemporary reimagining of the 2002 classic, this RTS will put you in control of armies featuring mythological hero units that can lay waste to your opposition’s army.
This edition of the game comes with tweaks that range from upgrades to the combat to major overhauls of the UI. Our review calls out the improved visuals. “Hero units glimmer with a distinctive aura, and the ancient environs hit your eye with impressive detail. One of the many reasons I’ll never rank particularly highly online in this game is that I get distracted by the lovely oceans and spend seconds at a time just… watching them.”
Abiotic Factor
(Image credit: Deep Field Games)
A nominee for PC Game of the Year and Best Indie Game at this year’s Golden Joystick Awards, Abiotic Factor puts you in the shoes of stranded scientists trying to survive a paranormal outbreak at the GATE Cascade Research Facility. You and your group of “coworkers” will need to scavenge for food and craft weaponry if you want to escape. It’s a great excuse to work with (and yell at) your friends as you endeavor to make your little corner of the invaded offices safe. I could go into more depth, but all you need to know is from the opening of our review. “Abiotic Factor is an instant survival classic, and one of the best games I’ve played in years.” Hop to it.
Diablo 4
(Image credit: Blizzard)
Loot! Loot! Loot! The replayability of the Diablo franchise is nothing new. The addictive design of the franchise is evident in Diablo 4’s roguelike Helltide events, endgame moments that drop you into demon-packed zones ready to explode into gear the second you vanquish them. With an MMO-lite structure, you can build the OP barbarian (or sorcerer, or rogue) of your dreams, customizing your character to the nth degree. Grab it on Xbox Game Pass and get to clicking. And click-click-clicking.
