December is already halfway through, which means for many people celebrating throughout the world, Christmas is mere days away with family reunions and gift exchanges soon to be at hand.
For many families around the globe, Christmas is a perfect opportunity for family and friends to reconnect through games or to gift each other with games new and old.
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While video games may be popular gifts at this time of year, there are a good number of games that are actually set during Christmas day or, at the very least, the Christmas season.
At first glance, these games may not appear to be Christmas tales, but their developers used the holiday setting in several interesting ways to give players unique experiences with Christmas and the winter season as a fun backdrop.
This list does not contain games explicitly set during Christmas, such as 2025’s The Elf On The Shelf: Christmas Heroes and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
8 Bayonetta 2
A Demonic Christmas
For being a fantasy, demon-focused series centered around a coquettish witch wielding guns and shoes strapped with guns for heels, most people would never have imagined a franchise such as Bayonetta ever taking place during Christmas.
Yet, Bayonetta 2 opens up rather oddly on Christmas Eve with the titular witch holiday shopping in New York City of all places with her friend Enzo.
Just as soon as the Christmas Eve parade is about to begin, centaur-like angels attack the city, causing Bayonetta to stop her holiday shopping and the fallen angel Rodin, dressed as Santa Claus, to help her by gifting her brand-new guns.
The Christmas theming of Bayonetta 2 doesn’t stick around for long in the game after Bayonetta’s friend Jeanne‘s soul is dragged to Inferno, but its opening level is certainly a unique one to kick off the start of Bayonetta’s second game.
7 Dead Rising 4
Hank East’s Holiday Adventure
The Dead Rising series has always had a more comical approach to American consumerism, with its mall and casino resorts allowing its protagonists to use virtually everything and anything to take out zombies, from teddy bears to chainsaws.
Naturally, a game set during the Christmas season with its huge sales would be a great setting for a Dead Rising game, but Capcom Vancouver sought to entice fans more by setting Dead Rising 4 back in Willamette, Colorado with Frank West returning.
Despite this potential, Dead Rising 4 turned out to be regarded as the worst entry in the series by most players as it recast West’s original voice actor, got rid of the series’ signature timer and survivor escort mechanics, and reduced psychopath bosses to brief maniac fights.
Still, Dead Rising 4 can be a ton of sandbox holiday fun as players can fight a crazy mall Santa called Sadistic Claus and his legion of elves, fight zombies dressed as gingerbread men and elves, and craft the Froztee Penguin headgear to freeze zombies.
6 Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage
The Aftermath of a Holiday Massacre
Christmas is well known for being a time of jolly fun and love, but oftentimes, pop culture tends to twist Christmas norms in rather comical or horrifying ways, such as the Silent Night, Deadly Night slasher films or Robot Chicken‘s Christmas Specials.
This is the case for Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage, which has players clean up the aftermath of Santa massacring his elves and reindeer at the North Pole.
While this premise may be upsetting or disturbing for some, it’s oddly enough pretty fun to clean up Santa’s Rampage with friends in multiplayer and a bit satisfying to reorganize the North Pole back to its clean, jolly state.
Plus, it’s also interesting trying to piece together what exactly caused Santa to attack his elves and reindeer in the first place and investigate the crime scenes like a detective before tossing the remains in a fireplace.
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5 Tom Clancy’s The Division
A Sickly New York Holiday
If players were to judge Tom Clancy’s The Division by the cover, they may think it’s a generic modern-day military shooter game and to an extent it is, but what separates it from the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield is that it’s set during the Christmas season.
Set in an alternate 2015 when a bioweapon known as Green Poison wiped out most of NYC’s population after Black Friday, The Division follows government agents known as The Division as they struggle to restore order to the city from criminals.
It’s especially eerie to explore a vacant NYC completely covered in Christmas decor and coated with snow when this time of year for the city is known for being exceptionally crowded with tourists and shoppers alike.
The action in The Division can get intense, but like Viscera Cleanup, The Division is best played with three friends to coordinate attacks and countermeasures against NYC’s many criminal factions hoping to profit from the city’s Christmas plague.
4 Batman: Arkham Origins
Gotham’s Naughty Night
2013’s Batman: Arkham Origins is the black sheep in the Arkham series in many ways, including it being the only Arkham game developed by WB Games Montreal, being a prequel, and not featuring Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill.
Despite these characteristics, Arkham Origins is still a ton of fun as it not only features a younger Batman fighting against Black Mask, Deathstroke, Deadshot, and other villains striving to score a bounty on the Dark Knight, but this all happens on Christmas Eve.
Some of Batman’s best stories are set during the Christmas and winter seasons, such as Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: White Knight, and Batman: The Animated Series‘ Heart of Ice, and Origins is no exception.
Here, Origins explores the beginnings of Batman’s relationships with many of his recurring villains and allies but also sets the stage for Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
3 Kingdom Hearts 2
The Nightmare After Christmas
The Kingdom Hearts series is famous for perfectly merging the worlds of classic Disney films with the edgy fantasy designs of Final Fantasy and while Kingdom Hearts 1 does explore The Nightmare Before Christmas a bit, Kingdom Hearts 2 does more so.
Kingdom Hearts 1‘s Halloween Town doesn’t feature any elements of Christmas, but Kingdom Hearts 2‘s incarnation of Halloween Town actually takes place a year after the original Nightmare Before Christmas and lets Sora explore Christmas Town.
It’s a ton of fun getting to explore both Halloween and Christmas Town in Kingdom Hearts 2 as both areas are filled with Heartless based on both holidays, such as one based on a toy soldier and a jack-in-a-box.
Plus, it’s just neat to see Jack Skellington struggle to prove himself to Santa Claus after he almost ruined Christmas the first time around and a revived Oogie Boogie briefly take over Christmas Town.
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2 Cronos: The New Dawn
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Bloober Team is quickly becoming a horror powerhouse in the gaming industry thanks to its critically acclaimed Silent Hill 2 remake, and its own original sci-fi survivor horror title Cronos: The New Dawn.
However, what many gamers might not have guessed is that Cronos: The New Dawn is actually a Christmas game due to it being set during not one but multiple Christmas Eve thanks to the game’s time travel mechanics.
Players will often encounter fresh and long dead Christmas trees as they explore an alternate 1980s Poland and the infested remains of the modern New Dawn district, alongside notes of people describing their struggles with a new infection keeping everyone indoors during the holiday.
Later on, players will eventually encounter grotesque mutants called Orphans that can not only appear from flesh-covered walls of Christmas-decorated apartments but also from snow piles outside, making Cronos one of the scariest games set during Christmas yet.
1 Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
A Very Spidey Christmas
In contrast to the Christmas horror of Cronos, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a much more upbeat game set during the holiday season in NYC.
Set a year after Marvel’s Spider-Man, Miles Morales sees the titular hero struggle to defend the city by himself and live up to the mantle of Spider-Man after Peter Parker leaves the country to help Mary Jane Watson report overseas.
What follows is a truly hopeful and uplifting story of Miles struggling to help his community and his loved ones as he comes into his own as not a sidekick to Peter but his very own Spider-Man.
Plus, it’s a ton of fun getting to swing in the snowy streets of Marvel’s New York and see Miles help people through the holiday season, especially Teo Alvarez and his pet cat, Spider-Man, A.K.A. Spider-Cat.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
