The best last-minute gaming gifts

One of 2023’s biggest cinema trends was the way accomplished filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, and many more delivered some of the most creatively and commercially successful work of their careers. There was just something in the air this year, as one major artist after another took big swings that connected.

There are a lot of ways to judge a great performance. In 2023, as in every year, some of the year’s best movies were quirky, colorful, boundary-pushing challenges to the cinematic status quo, and some were low-key, emotionally intense stories, either tracking the lives of famous historical figures or just trying to evoke the pains of real life. Our list of the best performances of the year honors both extremes: outsized performances that tickled and surprised us, and realistic ones that made us forget we were watching a performance. Here are our favorites among the many great performances we saw in movies in 2023.

We're cutting it real close to the big day here, but if you're on the hunt for last-minute gifts these PS5 digital delivery options are your go-to this week. We're past the last shipping dates for most retailers now, so if you don't want to rely on stock at your local brick and mortar Best Buy or Walmart for PS5 gifts, these instant delivery gift cards come in particularly handy. 

“Hеre is the child that you left behind. Here is the kid with the curious mind. Here is the wonder we used to feel, back when the magic was real.” These are lines from “A World of Your Own,” a song performed late in Wonka, the 2023 movie starring Timothée Chalamet as a young version of Roald Dahl’s eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka. The song keys into a frequently stated motivation for this movie’s version of the character: He wants to use his candymaking magic to create a feeling of childlike wonder in his customers, and indeed, the whole world.

2023 was an absolute unit of a year for gaming. No one could possibly have played all the awesome titles that came out across platforms. I certainly didn’t. But that also means that you have options for grabbing a last-minute gift for that gamer in your life! I’ve gathered a few of the best titles that happen to be the type someone might have put off while playing the latest Final Fantasy or Call of Duty.

It's nearly the holidays, which means some of you might be looking for something to play on your Steam Deck while you're away visiting family. The choice just got a little harder: beautiful early access tactics game Songs Of Conquest and clever fantasy citybuilder Against The Storm are both now Steam Deck verified.

It’s never a bad time to find your new favorite sci-fi movie, so why not check out a few new ones before the holidays? Netflix has plenty of great sci-fi picks to choose from, but this month we’re looking to a some surprising choices that you might not expect.

In 2022, upstart crowdfunding website Gamefound left beta to go head-to-head against Kickstarter, at the time the world’s premiere crowdfunding platform for tabletop games. More than a year later, the Polish company has proved its worth with a cavalcade of high-profile campaigns by CMON, Everything Epic, and Chip Theory Games among others. Now its own imprint, Awaken Realms, has achieved something remarkable: It’s campaign for Nemesis: Retaliation, the third in its series of Alien-inspired board games, is now the third most-funded tabletop game of all time. It closed Thursday with nearly $12.2 million earned. Delivery is expected by April 2025.

The call of the couch gets stronger every year as new gadgets, movies, TV shows, and streaming services launch. As such, you may find yourself considering how to curate a space to watch coveted new (and old) releases that doesn’t involve leaving the house, or paying for tickets and reserved seating. You’ll still have to spend money on snacks, but not nearly as much.

If you have someone in your life who’s often zipping off to exotic locales, or just traveling frequently for work, there are some amazing gifts you can get for them that can make their downtime during travel pass them by a little quicker.

From bustling New York streets to rolling Hyrule fields, 2023 gave us our fair share of fantastic open worlds to get lost in. With vast maps full of combat, puzzles, and intrigue, everyone steps into a new game world looking for something different, but all searching for escapism like no other genre can provide. This year, they took us to places rooted in the real world and fantasy, as well as our distant past and future. We unlocked the secrets of Hogwarts, slid through the shadows of ancient Baghdad, swung between Manhattan skyscrapers, leaped around the floating islands of Pandora, and dived into the Hyrulian depths. But which of these proved the most fun to spend time in? These are the best open-world games of 2023.

The holiday season has begun in earnest, and the clock is ticking on your gift-giving obligations. While I'm sure the list for what you want rolls out the door and down the street, coming up with ideas for others is tough. That's where I come in, with my personal picks and a rock-solid who's-who of the hardware, peripherals, and games that every gamer worth their thumbs wants.