This year, my brother and I are with my dad for Christmas. My mom went home to spend Christmas with her family, but before she left we did half-a-Christmas. So my gifts from her, my grandparents, and one or two “from Santa”:
- A pre-order for the limited edition of FF XIII-2 (once bitten, twice excited about the changes they’re making)
- An IOU for a copy of Valkyria Chronicles 2 for PSP
- How to Do Things with Videogames, by Ian Bogost (kindle)
- Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal (kindle)
- Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn (kindle)
- The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry), by Siva Vaidhyanathan (kindle)
- The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie (kindle, First Law #1)
- Newsgames: Journalism at Play, by Ian Bogost (kindle)
Oh, and I picked out the Game of Thrones board game as a gift for my brother and we’ve had a lot of fun with it. Enough that I’d consider it partially a gift for me, which is the good thing about doing your own gift shopping. If you’ve got a group of people willing to sit down and play a really political game for 3+ hours, I’d definitely recommend it. Imagine Risk if there were no dice rolls, and manipulating people is a far better strategy than outright destroying them. You tell them you’ll guard their back as long as it suits you, and when it doesn’t…. well.
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For our second Christmas, which was on the proper date, I mainly got more books, but physical ones this time:
- Valkyria Chronicles 2, for real
- A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster
- The Golden City, by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm trilogy #3)
- Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, by Michael Zielenziger
- Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie (First Law #2)
- Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie (First Law #3)
My personal gift to my brother was Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil, another double-gift. We played it before going to bed, and I had fun with it. I can’t say how it compares to other deckbuilding games, but turns are very quick once you get used to it and the cards interact with each other in some pretty interesting ways. For example, I won the last game we played using the Carl hero, from the Automata strips. His ability makes the most expensive types of cards - Boss Loot - cheaper by one. There’s another card, Broodax In Disguise (not for the faint of heart - it’s an alien wearing a person’s body), that has a value of 1 when you play it, OR a value of 3 if you intend to put those points towards buying Boss Loot.
Whenever I failed to have enough to buy a Boss Loot, I bought more Broodax. Eventually, I got hands that - out of six cards - three of them are Broodax in Disguise.
Needless to say, I acquired a good chunk of phat lootz, which won me the game.
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Honourable mention goes to a couple of gifts I could only get shipped to the US, so my aunt brought them to my mother while she was visiting. So when she gets home, I’ll get two gifts that you may find very strange: a shell replacement for my DS Lite (a few hours of tinkering, which may ruin the machine!) and a bundle of empty cases for PSP games. Anyway, I’m weird like that. Both of those things were pretty cheap, and I’ll be happy to have them. I can replace the sticker-covered cases from PSP games I bought used, and if all goes well, be the owner of a non-broken red and black DS. Woo.
(also, does anyone still say woot? I have the strangest desire to start saying it, just because)