Did Games Save Your Thanksgiving?

tickertrader

They did for Rabbit over at GamersWithJobs. Must reading over there:

I close my eyes, grasping for escape, incongruously finding the wastelands of Fallout 3.

The green-and-black of my Pip-Boy readout indicates contamination, my pixelated doppelganger's face humorously unwell. Examining the plate in front of me, my VATS targeting overlay descends, percentages indicating the areas of highest bacterial concentration.

This calms me. It occurs to me, although briefly, that this is not a healthy reaction to American holiday tradition.

Linky: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/42468

What about you PA folks? Got any stories about how you ran away from the horror of familytime?

darkenedwing

When I woke up I played WoW.
Then I had to go to a neighbors to eat and I was there almost all day, and I thought of WoW.
Then when I got home I played WoW.

:P

Captain K

tickertrader are you a spambot

PeregrineFalcon

Captain K wrote: »

tickertrader are you a spambot

[SPEECH, ???%] No, I'm not a spambot.

I wonder if he put enough points into his Speech stat to pass this check.

Captain K

man you're a dork

but so am I, I laughed


Whether or not the OP gets banned here, this can be a decent thread. I'm fortunate that my cousins all love Guitar Hero and they get a kick out of watching me play on Expert, so we always spend a lot of time playing it during family visits. It's not that I needed to escape from any family--it was a small gathering and nobody lame was there--but we had a blast passing the guitars around.

The_Scarab

I don't get a Thanksgiving so the next best thing for me will be the christmas holidays, of which I have none. So I guess I'll be playing Mass Effect again. I can get lost in that game for a long time it is so absorbing.

NickTheNewbie

It was just me, my fiancee, and her grandmother for 4 days. Ace Combat X on the psp was my savior.

Captain K

that sounds terrifying

NickTheNewbie

The grandmother lives in some kind of retirement community very akin to del boca vista. If it wasn't just us, it was the company of other old people.

ZackSchilling

I almost brought rock band 2 and its whole hockey-bag-filling setup to my extended family's gigantic thanksgiving dinner, but decided against it at the last minute. The family was upset that I did not bring it. Upset. This is truly a brave new world. In the past I would be heckled for bringing games. Anyone who played did so briefly and left. I'd lug a console setup like Mario Party or even the Wii with Sports and it would go unused after 5 minutes.

Anyway, games did save my Thnaksgiving, just none of them were the vidja variety. We played scrabble, blockus, poker, apples to apples, etc. It was the best Thanksgiving in years.

UncleSporky

We went to Michigan to visit my grandparents who moved there. I felt a little bad about it, because you don't go all the way to Michigan just to play Castlevania Ecclesia on DS, but nobody else was doing very much either; I think presence was enough. And I wasn't so engrossed that I couldn't hear what was going on and participate. Mainly I played it in the car anyway, which gave me a headache.

I don't know if I would've had the patience to fight through some of those bosses, just focusing totally on that for hours.

wunderbar

Thanksgiving was in October, so I can't remember. It probably didn't because I had like, 9 hours of football to watch. Both the real Canadian version, and the odd, over-hyped American version.

Khavall

My parents have a Wii and an 8 year old desktop.

Turns out I left my copy of Icewind Dale 2 there.

And at the instruction of my little sister I brought Brawl and my controllers home.

However, relatively little gaming went on, because we all had a hell of a lot of other stuff to do.

urahonky

The water heater broke in my house, and I was sick all day. So it wasn't a very pleasant atmosphere. Did get a lot of Fallout 3 in, however.

darkenedwing

Ironic that on a day that celebrates one of the events leading to the birth of our country a lot of people played Fallout, a game about our country becoming a radioactive wasteland, and the decimated D.C. area :P

Shadowfire

ZackSchilling wrote: »

I almost brought rock band 2 and its whole hockey-bag-filling setup to my extended family's gigantic thanksgiving dinner, but decided against it at the last minute. The family was upset that I did not bring it. Upset. This is truly a brave new world. In the past I would be heckled for bringing games. Anyone who played either did so briefly and left. I'd lug a console setup like Mario Party or even the Wii with Sports and it would go unused after 5 minutes.

Anyway, games did save my Thnaksgiving, just none of them were the vidja variety. We played scrabble, blockus, poker, apples to apples, etc. It was the best Thanksgiving in years.

My wife's folks played Rock Band 2 with us for a good chunk of the day.

The rest was spent with Wii Sports. :P

darkwarriorva

My Thanksgivings (plural) weren't bad in that they needed saving, but in the past 5 years or so I've lugged a console, projector, and screen down to my parents' house. But not this year, since my brother had a new house built and we held the event there. Instead, I just brought along my 360 and a few games for it and Wii. Played some Rock Band 2 with my brothers, let them run around in GTA4 (leading to wonderful conversations that you want older family members to overhear), and then broke out the Boom Blox for the rest of the family. That was quite popular.

For the 2nd thanksgiving with my wife's family, they came to our house, where all my toys are. But what did we do? Rock Band 2 and Boom Blox. So those games are the winners for this year.

Omegasquash

I played Fallout 3, and I did it all night long. Except for that damn glitchy Head of State quest, it's sucking me in like Oblivion did back in the day.

Ronen

Actually, yes. At a holiday earlier this year I brought over my Wii for some Wii Sports fun with my cousins. They all got hooked, but apparently I underestimated just how hooked. I walked into Thanksgiving to see a Wii hooked up to the TV and a full Rock Band setup. I stopped in my tracks and said, out loud, "Best. Thanksgiving. Ever."

After the meal, the kids (all 20-30 something) all took turns rocking out while the parents stood around dancing and singing along... everybody got really into it, it was a great time.

I will say that nothing ruins a good Rock Band party like Coheed and Cambria. By the time that song was over, everybody was ready to quit... and we did (granted it was getting late).

Raijin Quickfoot

I stayed at my Mom's house Thanksgiving night and the next day so I was trapped in 1982 with no internet or gaming at all.

Renzo

I started and finished The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass over the week that I took off from work. So yes, games saved me. I often had one earphone in my ear, sitting among the family and watching football at the same time.

Otherwise I would be in another room playing a console, so I was able to spend time with the family and game, the best of both worlds. And it seemed to make a difference to the family, too.

Silvoculous

I played a hell of a lot of Audiosurf. But I do that most every night anyway. This year, however, I was doing it with awesome new house-filling speakers.

LoveIsUnity

urahonky wrote: »

The water heater broke in my house, and I was sick all day. So it wasn't a very pleasant atmosphere. Did get a lot of Fallout 3 in, however.

I decided to clean my attic and the resulting explosion of dust destroyed my sinuses. I spent most of the day in bed playing Puzzle Quest, slipping in and out of a Theraflu induced coma. I did, however, finally craft a godlike weapon.

urahonky

LoveIsUnity wrote: »

urahonky wrote: »

The water heater broke in my house, and I was sick all day. So it wasn't a very pleasant atmosphere. Did get a lot of Fallout 3 in, however.

I decided to clean my attic and the resulting explosion of dust destroyed my sinuses. I spent most of the day in bed playing Puzzle Quest, slipping in and out of a Theraflu induced coma. I did, however, finally craft a godlike weapon.

Working in a corporate building as IT Bitch makes you run around all the dusty rooms, cleaning out nasty closets, and work on the wiring in the dust filled... Uhh... Things above the lights.

My sinuses are a trainwreck every day lol. I didn't think about Puzzle Quest. I may have to bust that out tonight since I'm feeling pretty sick still.