The best Christmas games aren’t epics, they’re done in a day

Listen: it isn’t that I don’t believe you. I believe that you believe you are going to play all of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey over Christmas. I just don’t believe that it is going to happen. It might not be Odyssey. It may be Red Dead Redemption 2, or Fallout 76. You know: whichever mammoth game has tickled your adventure gland this year, filling your belly with butterflies and your heart with wanderlust. Maybe you never quite got around to it in a busy year, and now is going to be the time. Perhaps you saved it for Christmas deliberately, anticipating a long, lazy week with your head in another world. What you might have forgotten is that this season is, traditionally, a period where you lose control over your own time. Once you drive home for Christmas, you forfeit many of the freedoms you enjoy the rest of the year round in exchange for cake and cheese. One of your empty days is given over to travel; another couple to familial obligation; a few more to realising that, actually, you quite like your loved ones and games don’t actually feel that important right now and, oh look, it’s February.