Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Today most of us here at Netto's Game Room will be away from our PCs and will be spending time with our families. Before that happens however, I wanted to take a quick moment to share some of my Thanksgiving memories. Of course being a gaming site I'll be focusing more on my video game memories, but for me they are also so much more. It is all the times I spent with my family and the things we did together, but the video games themselves help remind me of those times.
So with that being said, here's a few games that always remind me of Thanksgiving!
Shadow the Hedgehog
I know this might sound crazy, but Shadow the Hedgehog is a Thanksgiving game to me.
November of 2005 was when the game originally released, and it was going to be my Christmas present that year. Well, stubborn me ended up renting the game, and my parents eventually gave me the game early. So spoiled me ended up with a copy of Shadow the Hedgehog, which I then took over to BeamBrain's house to play.
Anyway, Shadow was also the game I played non stop Thanksgiving morning that year while I waited for family to arrive. I started the day waiting at my mom's work (where I brought my GameCube with me), and eventually we went to my grandma's house for the actual event. Still, I went through a good chunk of the game that morning, and I enjoyed every second of it. Thinking back to Shadow always reminds me of that day, and I'll always have that nostalgia for the title because of that.
Call of Duty Black Ops
Black Ops is, and always will be, a Thanksgiving game for me. I didn't own the original Black Ops, but my cousin Brandon brought the game over for us to play. We mostly played Zombies and multiplayer, but one day he decided to leave the game behind so we could play it the next time he came over. Well, Thanksgiving came around, I was bored, and I decided to give the game a shot myself.
That day I played the heck out of that campaign! I didn't expect much out of it, but I was hooked. The gameplay was solid, sure, but what really got me was that story. I don't want to ruin it here, but Black Ops is easily my favorite CoD storyline, and I recommend everyone give it a chance; if you like CoD or not. (And yes, I managed to finish it before I was called over to my grandma's house to eat!)
Steins;Gate
Steins;Gate is a game that I originally couldn't get into. I couldn't stand the characters, I found the intro boring, and I didn't understand why people would love it so much. I got it the year it came out on the Vita, so 2015, and I played it off and on for the next couple of months trying to understand what made it so great. It just wasn't happening...
So when Thanksgiving came around, I didn't have to go to work, and I figured I'd take the chance to stay up later that night to work on some games. Steins;Gate was meant to be one of the games I'd spend an hour on at most, and then move on. Well, I reached that "moment" in the story, and the next thing I knew it was early in the morning... Like, 3-4 AM early in the morning.
I'll never forget that night, and waking up early the next day for Black Friday shopping. It was a great memory, and also what kicked off my family's tradition of Black Friday shopping. It was a crazy time, and the first year I feel like we really got back to "normal" after the death of my uncle the day after Christmas in 2013. So not only did Steins;Gate finally hook me and become one of my all time favorites that night, but it was the start of many traditions, and a glimpse at our new normal life.
Trails Series
The final game I want to talk about today is actually a series, the Trails Series. Like with Steins;Gate, this too was a game I got started really playing in 2015. I bought Trails in the Sky because I knew Cold Steel was releasing soon, and I heard such amazing things about Sky SC. So I booted the game up, and began slowly working through what is considered the "slowest" entry in the entire series. I'll admit this did kinda put me off at first, but the more I played the game, the more relaxing I realized it was, and the more invested I became in the lives of the characters. It was a game I started to play just to jump into these character's lives when I wanted to relax, and it became my full on comfort game. So of course I'd play it at least some on Thanksgiving as well!
The Thanksgiving of 2015 is when I started my own personal tradition of playing Trails games during Holidays, and making an alternate save file to remember the moment. If you look at my save history across the entire series, you'll see every Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter, etc is saved there somewhere, and this year is no different. Trails of Cold Steel III is my game of choice today, and nothing has really changed for me. This series is still a comfort series for me, and I love every moment I spend in this world. I could talk on and on and on about how much I love the games in general, but for time sake I'm just going to keep it simple.
Thanks to Thanksgiving of 2015, Trails became one of my all time favorite JRPG series, and it's something I plan to continue playing for the rest of my life. Even when the series is finally finished, this is something I will keep returning to.
And that is it!
Of course I have other Thanksgiving stories from Legend of Zelda, to Battlefield, but we'll save these for another time. If I were to go through every single one we'd have close to 30 games on this list, so I'll cut it off here.
Again, I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you all have a great time with your family and friends today!
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