It’s the Thanksgiving holiday week, and that means if you work for a company worth a damn (and some that aren’t worth a damn, but I digress), you probably have the next couple of days off. (Apologies to anyone who works retail.) You might be buying some games you missed this year during Black Friday sales, or perhaps you’re completely at a loss for what to play. Fear not, my friend. We’re here to suggest some games to get you through the long weekend, and all the nonsense your hometown will put you through while you’re there.
2 / 7
Play it on: Steam
Current goal: Make it hurt
If you want to play something that will spark some great Thanksgiving dinner conversations, Mouthwashing is an excellent primer for the anticapitalist rhetoric you’ll use to shut down your conservative family members around the table. Wrong Organ’s psychological horror game starts off with a bunch of workers finding out they’re being screwed over by their corporate overlords. Then it escalates to the most extreme, horrific endgame possible between five resentful people stranded in a spaceship. I finished the game this morning and I’m still peeling away the layers in my mind. Luckily, I’m not going home for Thanksgiving this year, so I can unpack all of that without being back in the Bible Belt. — Kenneth Shepard
3 / 7
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC
Current goal: Get out of the abandoned mines
Nine Sols is a 2D Sekiro-like that combines exploring serpentine levels with parry-heavy combat in which timing and precision are everything. It’s by Taiwan-based Red Candle Games, which made the 2019 cult-horror hit Devotion, and shows an impressive range for the young indie studio. Its action is spot-on and its world is both beautiful and evocative, utilizing a Taopunk aesthetic to great effect both visually and lore-wise.
I played it a bunch when it debuted on PC earlier this year and have started over again on PS5 now that its console ports are out (Nine Sols is on Game Pass as well). It feels like something of a sleeper GOTY contender. Despite scoring no nominations at The Game Awards 2024, I’m expecting to see it on more than a few end-of-year lists. There have been a ton of great story and puzzle-driven indie games this year, but Nine Sols really scratches that 2D action itch. — Ethan Gach
4 / 7
Play it on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, Windows, macOS, Linux (Steam Deck YMMV)
Current goal: Recruit more Kindred to my coterie
Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York has sat untouched in my Steam library for a while. Having recently started up a game of Vampire, the original tabletop roleplaying game which Coteries of New York adapts portions of, now felt like a good time to finally take this visual novel for a spin.
And damn, am I glad I did. Thus far, Coteries of New York is proving to be great inspiration for my campaign; it’s doing a great job of keeping the game’s world fresh and active in my mind. Vampire is a dense TTRPG. Characters aren’t heroes they’re monsters coping with a hellish existence. And the setting has a ton of privatized lore and terms that can take a long time to memorize with confidence. Sure, you can always get that information by reading the rulebooks while listening to some wonderfully dreadful music (I heartily recommend Soma FM’s Dark Zone for late evenings spent dreaming of the Kindred), but having a creative work to experience and learn from definitely helps.
I’m also loving that Coteries of New York, unlike certain other, more high-profile Vampire releases, is a visual novel, making it a nice change of pace from the more active video games I’m used to playing. The genre allows my mind to focus more on the dark, gothic vibes of its World of Darkness setting than I could if it were a standard RPG—though I do still wish that, like Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest, it had a few more RPG mechanics. That game, which exists in the same universe as Vampire, effectively blends the visual novel format with the role-playing game.
But though I’d love some more gamey mechanics in Coteries of New York, it still does a wonderful job of delivering the dark sense of dread and despair a good World of Darkness game should. I’ve been playing as the Toreador character Lamar, mostly palling around with his newfound Malkavian friend Hope. But there are more vampires to meet from the setting’s various clans. And if the clever and faithful writing in Hope’s section is anything to go by, I have some more sanguine narrative treasures to unearth on the dark streets of New York City. — Claire Jackson
5 / 7
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Current goal: Reclaim my humanity
One thing I love about RoboCop: Rogue City is that it’s the kind of mid-budget game that can be completed in a weekend, an increasingly rare and welcome quality in this era of games that want to keep you playing for dozens of hours, if not forever. And yet, despite Rogue City’s manageable runtime, I’ve been playing it off and on (mostly off) for months, doing a few missions every now and then before setting it aside for weeks on end. It’s not that I don’t like it, I like it a lot! It’s just that I feel no need to rush through it. However, I think this long holiday weekend is when I should finally bring my time protecting the citizens of Old Detroit to an end.
If you have yet to try Rogue City for yourself but you have a fondness for first-person shooters and/or Paul Verhoeven’s original 1987 sci-fi masterpiece, let me tell ya, this game absolutely nails it. As RoboCop, you feel hefty and formidable, your footfalls landing with that satisfying hydraulic THUD. And while blasting punks with your signature Auto 9 (that gun that emerges from Murphy’s leg) feels just like you always imagined it would, the best surprise in the game is how much time you spend not shooting dudes, but talking to citizens, investigating crimes, and exploring a (refreshingly) small section of the city that oozes atmosphere, perfectly capturing the urban decay of the film’s setting.
From what I can gather, it seems like Rogue City was a success. My hope is that this results in us getting more mid-budget, modest-sized games in the near future, games that aim to do one thing really well, rather than aiming to do a million things just to keep us busy for hours on end. — Carolyn Petit
6 / 7
Play it on: Switch, 3DS
Current goal: Defeat Volvagia
I recently returned to Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the first time in over a decade. I play a little bit each night while my kids watch before they get ready for bed. Its Nintendo 64-era jagged polygons and ugly textures have them completely entranced. I find myself equally surprised by how well the game still holds up. The music is still incredible. The dungeons are very clever. And the game has a remarkable sense of humor. It’s amazing what the team at Nintendo achieved at the time, taking a still evolving franchise into a completely different perspective on transformative new hardware. It’s also fascinating, and a little bit emotionally unsettling, revisiting a place I once knew so well and recalling my forgotten memories of it in real-time. I expected my kids and I to get bored after the first night. Now I can’t wait to finish it. — Ethan Gach
7 / 7