“Why don’t you post something about holiday Christmas games that have come out?”

“No, that is such a horrendous waste of time. Why would I bother talking about games that are disastrously awful?”

“Well do you have anything better you wanted to talk about this week?”

“Yeah, kinda. There’s that Metroid 2 fan remake that’s finally nearing completion. I’ve been meaning to do something on that for a while now.”

“Well you can put that off a little longer.”

“You’re right! I can!”

That’s pretty much the conversation I had with myself about doing this. As we swing inexorably towards what I know as the culmination event of our consumer/retail bondage-fest, which you may know as Christmas, there are inevitably going to be game developers hoping to bank on our misguided holiday spirit. Thus we have holiday themed games, and they are NEVER any good or worth paying for. Except for maybe Christmas Lemmings, but that was just a skin over a pre-existing game… and it was free.

So I took the time to browse through a few holiday-centric games and believe me, they’re not worth your time or money. Although there was one that sort of stuck out – Elf Squad 7. I’ll be honest, I was tricked into playing this because I didn’t even realize it was a holiday game. The biggest point it has going for it, it’s only a buck. Secondly, and very surprisingly, it’s made by Stardock! Stardock specializes in strategy games like Sins of a Solar Empire, which caused a few blinks of disbelief when I saw their logo attached to a cutesy-ish, retro style, holiday game. Which leads me to the third point, it’s retro, and we all know I’m a sucker for those. The music isn’t as chiptuney as I would have expected though, but it is happy and catchy and I can’t complain. The basic premise of the game is that there’s a present shortage and you have to help wrap the gifts. Toys and such fall from the sky and you have to use your gift wrapping gun to save them. Wrap enough gifts in the allotted time to beat the stage. In between stages you can buy upgrades, which I normally wouldn’t expect from such a basic game, but thankfully Stardock made it. You can pick from 6 different characters, and up to 4 people can play at once. Available on XBOX Live and PC. There’s a lot of game here for only a dollar. Christmas game or not, this is a good buy, and probably the only Xmas game that came out this year worth playing.

This is where I was going to list the other Xmas games that I came across, but I won’t even bother. You’re not going to play them, and you shouldn’t. Waste of time for me to talk about them and waste of time for you to know about them.

You know what, just play Christmas Lemmings. You can download it free HERE. But keep in mind it’s a DOS game. If you don’t know what Lemmings is, or DOS for that matter, then just adhere to my earlier statement of all Christmas themed games being garbage.

I was thinking, I created this blog with praising indie games in mind. It seems so often I’m bashing them. So much negativity… The next post will be a positive, upbeat one. I promise!