14 Best Christmas-Themed Levels In Video Games
How to make Christmas even better? Add Batman.
'Tis the season to rally together with your teammates, nail a last-minute headshot and return home in a blaze of gore-soaked glory. Christmas may come but once a year, but the following games managed to use all the tinsel-dossed trimmings of the festive period to make their levels truly timeless.
Hardly any of these games released to tie in with the colder months, and it wasn't all kiddy-friendly fare either. Instead, Hitman: Blood Money encouraged you to batter a handful of gangsters dressed as Kris Kringle himself, whilst Batman's third Arkham outing had you snapping the limbs of all sorts of themed goons. Whether it's a full game of Christmas cheer or a one-off utilisation of everything we love about the world's biggest celebration of consumerism, video games might have some of the best uses of yuletide cheer across any medium.
--
14. You Better Watch Out... - Hitman: Blood Money
Blood Money remains the best Hitman game IO Interactive have put out this side of Silent Assassin, and it's for wonderfully dark levels like this. Putting you in the shined-shoes of Agent 47 once again, you're tasked with infiltrating a party taking place at a luxurious mountain lodge. The best part about Blood Money was the addition of kills that could be made to look like accidents, so you were free to kill the various Santas wandering around, don their festive attire and set about pushing everyone into fireplaces or tumbling down the cliff face itself.
The guy you were sent to kill was one Chad Bingham Jr., a wealthy sort who if you waited long enough, would go and sit in a glass-bottomed pool, perilously dangling over the edge of the mountainside. One bullet to the bottom of that glass tipped him and his corpulent guests over into the gloomy beyond, and the best part? Nobody ever suspects Santa Claus...