Stocking Stuffers for Gamers

Ok, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One might be a little big to stuff into a stocking, but they are clearly the big news of the gaming world. If you haven’t gotten one, then use zoolert.com and find one (like we did!). If you have these systems, then here’s a list of things that gamers will love. If you have both the PS4, Xbox One and an SLI PC (lucky you!) connected to a ultra HD screen (:-), then you get to choose what platform you play on. The late model PC is still going to be the best, and then it depends on which ones have exclusives. So the strategy is to look at gamerankings.com to see the best PC games, then go to gematsu to find the exclusives and pick the best games for each console (if you are being a real nerd).

PC

This shouldn’t be an ordinary PC, now that the XBox One and Playstation 4 are so much faster, but one with bigger specs. That is a bigger graphics card. If you are lucky enough to have one of these then you want to get, so looking at gamerankings for the best games in the 2103. Note that gamerankings is pretty buggy on the release date searches, so I use the actual

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. 85%. Just released. Love this series.
Bioshock Infinite. Also amazing from March 25. 93%.
Dota 2. It is a team game 89% from JUly 2013.
The Stanley Parable. This is a walk around action game. Not the usual run and gun stuff, but got good ratings.
Saints Row IV.
XCom Enemy Within.
Tomb Raider. 87%
Grand Theft Auto: Vice city.
Battlefield 4 for the PC. The top rated game, although it is quite buggy and it still doesn’t look as good as the very best PCs (read dual SLI monster machines), but it is way better than the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Net, net, if you have a choice, get the Xbox version as the PS4 version is quite buggy. Getting it is reasonably tricky, but here are the steps:

Checking EVrewards says that MrRebates has a 7% rebate with them and with the current Black Friday sale it is $39 instead of $60

Playstation 4

So which titles are exclusive and also at gematsu.com on the PS4 and also have great ratings. It’s a little hard to tell, but here’s a launch list:

Killzone Shadow Fall. Halo like for when you get bored with crashes on BF4 (:-) or Call of Duty
Knack. Stunning visually, but the game play is hard and monotonous. Avoid with 57% rating on gamerankings.com
Resogun. This is the best reviewed indie so far. It is a sice-scrolling space shooter and it is free with the 30-day Playstation Plus subscription. 84% if you like this kind of thing.

inFAMOUS: Second Son
Uncharted.

Not exclusive but better scores than PC or Xbox One:

NBA 2K14. 84% and higher than the PC 80%
FIFA 14. 87% and just released.

One thing not to get:

Can DICE fix crashes in Battlefield 4 across all versions of the game before its “We’re sorry!” double XP event rolls out on Thursday? While I wish them the best of luck, it’s difficult to be optimistic. The studio has put out a new update for PlayStation 4 that should improve stability.

Fixed common crashes that could occur when changing weapons or maps

Reduced the probability of a corrupted save file in the single player campaign

Fixed a crash occurring when resuming the single player campaign

Fixed a bug where accessing PlayStation Plus subscription resulted in a connection error

Improved performance when shooting at destroyed Levolution objects

If I had dropped several hundred dollars on a new console and this game, I’d be furious right now. Today’s Battlefield 4 PS4 update addresses crashing – Destructoid.

Xbox One

Gematsu.com has the best list of full exclusives and it is kind of sad to see that most of the XBox One games haven’t been getting amazing reviews.

Dead Rising 3. 78% so not that great, but the best out there right now. It’s $49 at Amazon now so $10 off.
Forza Motorsport 5. 81%
Ryse: Son of Rome. 61%

And upcoming: