Gamers can be the hardest folks to spoil—you don’t know what they already have in their game library, or maybe they’re extremely picky about their gear. But whether your loved one is a retro aficionado or a modern hardcore gamer, Gizmodo’s 2024 gaming gift guide has something they’ll be thrilled to unwrap. These are our recommendations for consoles, peripherals, toys, board games, books, and more.
Table of Contents
Astro Bot
PlayStation’s best attempt to fill that Super Mario Bros. void, the $60 Astro Bot, stands on its own as a great platformer. Not only that, its enormous collection of past and present characters can make the brains of any longtime Sony fan buzz with nostalgia. Like many of the greatest 3D platformers, like Super Mario: Odyssey, or 2D platformers, like Rayman: Legends, Astro Bot doesn’t linger on any one gimmick for more than a level at a time. Most stages are full to the brim with charm and inventive design. Collecting the various bots is especially addicting if you have any knowledge of Sony’s vast archive of titles.
Super Mario Party Jamboree
Any proper round of Mario Party should have players slinging curses around the room, during their opponents’ turns and their own. As a return to form, the $60 Super Mario Party Jamboree will make this holiday gathering the most contentious it’s been in years—but instead of arguing about politics, you’ll be smiling and making strangling motions toward the player who stole your star for the second time that game. Just remember to have enough JoyCons to pass around, as many of the minigames require the motion controls from those controllers.
Gulikit KK3 Max Controller
There are so many quality controllers on the market; the one you get your loved one needs to be something special. Gulikit’s $80 Kingkong 3 controller is a great gift for someone who wants to avoid the notorious stick drift of the Nintendo Switch JoyCon controllers. It works with both PC and Switch, but it has a hefty feel with pleasingly padded grips. There are optional back paddles and removable buttons, so it’s nice for casual players and pros alike.
Lego Fortnite Battle Bus
Let’s say your giftee is a Fortnite fan. Well, instead of buying them more in-game currency, you could tear them away from the screen for a few hours with a $100 Lego Fortnite Battle Bus. It’s an intricate build crammed with so many little details from the game, plus the minifigs based on in-game outfits.
Spirit Island
For $90, Spirit Island is the kind of cooperative board game that will stay on top of your board game pile as you take it out again and again. It’s a kind of anti-colonialist revenge game where you take control of one of several island gods bent on ridding their island of colonizing explorers. It’s probably not the kind of box you start with if you haven’t done any tabletop gaming before, but because it’s cooperative, you get to struggle along with your friends and family without that one player who knows what they’re doing dominating each round.
War of the Ring: The Card Game
The best board games manage to take a few loose pieces of cardboard and plastic and transport you to epic landscapes and clashes between good and evil. The $45 box set War of the Ring: The Card Game takes the notoriously huge 2004 War of the Ring game and somehow makes it just as engrossing while taking up a quarter of the table space. It plays with two, three, or four people, and it creates interesting dynamics based on how many players are sitting at the table.
Air, Land, and Sea
It can be a challenge to get your parent to try a new board game, but the $18 Air, Land, & Sea box set, with its World War II theme and simple ruleset, could spark some interest. In this two-player game, you try to get the highest score in two out of three theaters of war. The trick is that each card has compounding effects that require forethought and strategy during every turn. Check out the expansion Spies, Lies, & Supplies for another wrinkle in the formula. You can combine both games into an epic multi-theater back and forth battle.
Nintendo Alarmo
If your giftee has ever played any of the games in the Mario, Legend of Zelda, or Splatoon franchises, Nintendo’s $100 Alarmo will prove an endearing gift. Nintendo’s alarm clock features fun and nostalgic animations. If they can’t stand being woken up by the clanging sounds of coins, there’s a gentle mode, too.
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Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard is one of the most famous video game studios in the world, and for good reason. If it wasn’t StarCraft or WarCraft 2, it was World of WarCraft that captured countless of hours of our attention. Jason Schreier’s book about Blizzard is a deep dive into the developer, told from the perspective of insiders, painting a picture of a company that was probably unlike any other developer before or since. For $30 in hardcover, it’s the kind of book that even a non-gamer will find interesting, but for those who ever played a Blizzard game, it’s an eye-opening look into how games are made.
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Atari 7800+
If you know someone with boxes of old Atari games stashed away, the Atari 7800+ is the best way to dive into retro gaming nostalgia. It plays the vast majority of Atari 2600 games, but you should also grab some of Atari’s new $30 re-release cartridges, including classics like Fatal Run or Ninja Golf. For $130, it works on any modern TV or display with HDMI, and it doesn’t require any real setup other than choosing the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio or the more-classic 4:3.
Lego Mario and Yoshi
There’s something so pixel-perfect about Lego replicating the pixelated, 8-bit graphics of yesteryear. The $130 Lego Super Mario World Mario & Yoshi kit is a fun build, and the resulting statue will look great displayed next to your consoles. Yoshi’s legs are attached to a gear system that you can turn with a crank.
Razer Wolverine V3 Pro
The $200 Razer Wolverine V3 Pro’s subtle design belies its ergonomic grace and clicky controls. It has the hall effect sticks to reduce the chance of drift and the instant response toggle to shorten the travel on the right and left triggers. The positioning on the back paddles is among the best we’ve used, and the face buttons feel clicky but still have enough depth to offer effective force-feedback. The Wolverine V3 Pro controllers work with both Xbox consoles and PC.
Corsair K65 Keyboard
Just in time for the many new Mac products with M4, Corsair’s excellent K65 keyboards are now available specifically for Mac products. While they’ll still work on Windows, if you know a player who is trying to get started gaming on Mac, the $180 K65 has the standard Mac layout and tried and tested feel. You may also want to get the K75 wireless gaming mouse alongside it, both of which are far better alternatives to Apple’s Magic keyboard and mouse.
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Analogue Pocket
For the first time in a while, the $220 Analogue Pocket is in stock and available to order. The little handheld is a FPGA emulation device capable of playing any of your original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges without any restrictions. Anyone with a stock of old Game Boy games will find this an endearing gift. With the right adapter, you can get it working with old Game Gear or Atari Lynx games, too.
PlayStation DualSense Edge
The PlayStation DualSense Edge controller has the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers that any PS5 player will appreciate. No, not every game uses these adaptive triggers, but it’s such a unique feature to PS5 their absence is painful. For that reason, the $200 PlayStation DualSense Edge controller is the best upgrade you can grant a PS5 gamer. It includes remappable buttons and deadzone adjustment on the joysticks.
Alienware Pro Wireless Headset
The $230 Alienware Pro Wireless Headset is one of the most comfortable headsets available. Its non-removable and non-moving pads don’t make it great for travel, but we prefer Alienware’s latest headset compared to most others. Beyond that, it has strong audio and voice capabilities for its price.
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Razer Kishi Ultra
For phone controllers, you want something that will fit most devices and perhaps a small tablet as well. The $150 Razer Kishi Ultra fits practically any phone or small-scale tablet like the iPad mini. It has all the little extras you want on gamer gear, like Chroma RGB lights and hall effect triggers. It’s the largest device of today’s current phone controllers, and it’s a supremely effective device for modern foldables as well.
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Razer Blackwidow V4 Pro 75%
The wireless Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% is one of the most premium keyboards you can buy right now, with just the right clacky sound and key press depth. Unlike some other mechanical keyboards, a relaxed finger won’t accidentally press a key you don’t mean to. The $300 Pro’s hot-swappable design allows for some excellent customization.
Meta Quest 3s
For $300, this is the best new-in-box way of playing the full slate of VR titles on the market now. Today’s Quest 3s is an especially great deal, since it includes a copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow and a few months of Quest+ to play games like Asgard’s Wrath II.
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PlayStation 5 Pro
If your giftee demands to play games at the highest possible fidelity outside of a gaming PC, then the $700 PS5 Pro is the best possible option for console gamers. For the 82 games that currently sport the “enhanced” label, these games now play at 60 FPS with extra visual flair that creates the best possible PlayStation 5 image on a 4K TV. Just make sure to buy the extra $70 disc drive if you know they have a few PS4 or PS5 discs lying around.
LegoNintendo SwitchPCPlayStationXbox
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The Best Tech Gifts of 2024 ➜
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Source: Gizmodo