Celebrate the holidays the way Saint Nick intended, by blasting through hordes of enemies in the best Christmas-themed FPS mods

Christmas, it is said, is a time for giving. Unless you happen to live in my house, in which case Christmas is a time for gibbing. What better way to celebrate the holiday season than by blasting two barrels of buckshot into a rampaging demon's chest? Red is the most festive colour, after all.

Sadly, festive first-person shooters are thin on the ground for some inexplicable reason. But as is so often the case, the FPS community has filled this smoking bullet-hole left by developers, decking PC gaming's gore-spattered halls with boughs of holly through the power of mods.

To help fellow FPS-heads get into the Christmas spirit, I've put together a roundup of the best Christmas-themed mods for PC gaming's most renowned shooters (plus one additional stocking filler that I think should be brought to your attention). I've also assigned them a festivity rating (scored, appropriately, out of twelve) to give you some sense of just how much Yuletide cheer they cram down the barrel.

Doom Christmas

Mod for: Doom 2

Festivity Rating: Seven shotguns brimming

Doom Christmas is a simple yet effective texture pack for Doom 2, introducing a medley of festive sprites to id's shooter sequel. The mod ties a little bow on your shotgun, plonks Santa hats on the imps and shotgun soldiers, transforms the Cacodemons into giant, glinting baubles, and adds holly wreaths to the exit doors.

My favourite part of the pack is the gun-toting Santas that replace the standard possessed human, mainly thanks to their impressively gnarly death animation. If you ever wanted to see jolly Saint Nick crumble like an overcooked Christmas turkey after being blasted by a rocket launcher, this is the mod for you.

The Twelve Days of Doommas

Mod for: Doom 2

Festivity rating: Eight grenades exploding

This rapid-fire level pack is like a fortifying shot of sherry on a frosty Christmas eve. The Twelve Days of Doommas comprises 15 short, sharp levels, each of which was designed in honour of the Twelve Days of Christmas by including the following:

• Twelve Hours of mapping
• Eleven Shotgun shells
• Ten Sector limit
• Nine Pain elementals
• Eight Former humans
• Seven Brainy spiders
• Six Power spheres
• Five Arch-viles
• Four Cyberdemons
• Three Damage floors
• Two Keycards
• One BFG

The result is a motley collection of furious gunfights boasting names like "Deck the underhalls" and "O, Tannenboom". Fair warning, this is a challenging wad—mainly because of all the cyberdemons lumbering about. But as Christmassy Doom wads go, this is one of the best.

Twisted Christmas

Mod for: Quake

Festivity rating: Six beasts a slayin'

Twisted Christmas is something of a holiday classic. Released way back in 1998, it sees you navigating an abandoned shopping mall, tramping up escalators and blasting through bookshops while avoiding nailgun-toting snowmen and hordes of Santa's horrible little helpers. It's the FPS mod equivalent of It's a Wonderful Life, if Frank Capra's cinema classic involved James Stewart gunning down 100 diminutive Henry Travers' all trying to chew his knees off.

Twisted Christmas' star has faded in light of more recent festive Quake projects (which I'll be discussing shortly). While the elves are a fun novelty, fighting them becomes quite annoying after a while, and there aren't many other enemies to vary things up. Nonetheless, there's still some magic in how its mall-themed map unfolds. Besides, what's Christmas without a little tradition, eh?

Arcane Dimensions' Xmas Jam

Mods for: Quake

Festivity Rating: 10 gunners gunning

Arcane Dimensions is one of the best Quake mods around—a collection of more than 30 spellbinding levels that bend the Quake engine into all manner of obscene positions. The base version alone would make a fine present for the FPS-obsessive in your life. But almost every year since the mod's release, contributors inspired by its environments have come together for a Christmas-themed level jam.

The result is dozens of new Quake maps built using the extra enemies, weapons and so forth added by Arcane Dimensions. Xmas Jam 2021, for example, featured fearsome arenas like Santa's Fragtory, sprawling gothic mazes like the Library of Forgotten Dreams, and quirky experiments like the honeycomb-themed Bee Home for Christmas. In each Jam all the maps are stitched together by a wintry hub level, whether it's a glittering ice-cave or a chocolate-box village prowled by Christmas spirits.

Any one of these geometric selection boxes is worth your time. But if you need a little help deciding where to start, the earlier Jams tend to feature more overtly Christmas-themed levels, while the later jams are typically more varied in theme and contain larger, more ambitious levels.

Bloody Christmas/Santa's Revenge

Mods for: Half-Life

Festivity Rating: FIIIIIIIVE SEVERED HAMSTRIIIINGS

Both these mods are fairly short, so I've bundled them together to fill out your stocking. Bloody Christmas sees Gordon Freeman attending the Christmas do at his new workplace—Antech Corporation, when a bunch of Marines crash the party and start blasting the scientists. After the initial area filled with Christmas trees and stacks of presents, it loses its festive feel a bit. But blasting Marines with a Spas-12 to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock definitely has its appeal.

Weirdly, Santa's Revenge also kicks off with Bobby Helms' Christmas classic. But the scenario is very different. Here, Gordon has travelled to the North Pole to take down a blood-crazed Father Christmas. This mod tries a bit harder to convert Half-Life into a seasonal experience, replacing headcrab-zombies with horrible screaming snowmen, and the original's acrobatic female spies with the lumpiest elves you've ever seen. It's quite an old mod, so expect some compatibility issues. But there's enough novelty here to tide you over until you're allowed to open your main presents.

Half-Life 2: Christmas Version

Mods for: Half-Life 2

Festivity Rating: Four Combine hurt

While there are a few bespoke Christmas mods for Half-Life 2, like PCTS: A Post Traumatic Christmas Special and Santa's Revenge 2 (which, as far as I can tell, is not actually related to the Half-Life 1 mod), I wouldn't recommend them. Neither is especially well made, and both are riddled with Internet humour that has aged like a snowman in July.

However, you can give regular Half-Life 2 a Yuletide makeover through Half-Life 2: Christmas version. This is a collection of seasonal Steam Workshop addons for Valve's legendary sequel, including a winter texture pack that dusts City 17 in a fine coating of snow, as well as Santa uniforms for Civil Protection, and a candy-cane crowbar.

A Very Thiefy Christmas Special

Mod for: Thief 2

Festivity Rating: 12 lords for thievin'

OK, so Thief is not really a first-person shooter, even if it is first-person and does feature shooting. But consider this my surprise gift to you—the thing you didn't put on your Christmas list—because A Very Thiefy Christmas Special might just be the best festive mod I played of them all.

The premise finds Garrett unexpectedly in charge of Basso's tavern over the holidays, having lost a drunken game of Poker with his primary fence and the closest thing he has to a friend. Garrett awakens with a stinking hangover and a list of Christmas chores to do, before heading out into town to jolly-Saint-Nick a few additional items required for the tavern's celebrations.

Considering the gimmicky nature of the mod, there's a huge amount of effort on display in A Very Thiefy Christmas. For starters, it has its own variant of Thief's briefing cutscenes, where the premise is relayed to you in storybook form, including The Night Before Christmas-style rhyming couplets. Once the mission begins proper, Garrett must brew a hangover cure in the tavern's kitchen before setting about fixing up the inn for Christmas, bringing decorations down from the attic and cleaning up the privy with water arrows.

Once his chores are done, it's out into the snowy night, where the townsfolk are in the throes of Christmas festivities. The central square is bustling with activity, children assemble a snowman, a choir crooning out carols, all around a massive Christmas tree. Elsewhere, you'll find shopkeepers preparing presents and kids playing in the street.

There are several tasks Garrett must complete beyond the tavern, such as hiring a cook to handle Christmas dinner, and finding a star for the top of the tree. But while ordinary citizens will tolerate your presence around the holidays, there's no Christmas truce between Garrett and the City Watch. So you'll still need to sneak around the map with discretion, using darkness and alternate passageways to complete objectives.

Stuffed with all the secrets, alternate passageways, and strange asides you'd expect in a great Thief mission, A Very Thiefy Christmas Special does a better job than most proper games of incorporating the Christmas spirit into the experience.