Christmas Gift Guide – Part 1

A wise man once said “It’s Christmas time, there’s not need to be afraid”, I like to think that he was talking about that difficult time when you can’t find a decent gift for a friend or loved one and just when you’ve given up all hope you stumble across the Ready Up Christmas gift guide and all the light and wonder of the season floods through your body. I’m pretty certain that’s what he was thinking about anyway.

We’ve collected up all the neat gifts and gadgets we could find and put them through their paces so you don’t end up buying anything duff.

Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia – £10.49

If there is one thing that Capcom has in abundance it’s characters and the best thing to do with characters is put them in a nice coffee table book for your gran to read after a few Christmas sherries. Produced by DK Books this 200-page encyclopedia will make a real beauty of a gift for any fact hungry gamer. Did you know Strider’s sword is called Cypher? No, you didn’t did you? Get out of my sight! How about this one; Jill Valentine is allergic to peanuts. OK, I made that one up. It’s me that’s allergic to peanuts. I just wanted to share my suffering with someone.

The even better news is that we have three copies of this sexy tome to give away so keep an eye on our features section for the competition.

Tritton Kunai Mobile Headset (for iPod, iPhone, & iPad) – £60

This is what I call a “showing off” headset. I know that makes me very old and uncool but I never understood the whole “wondering around with giant earphones on” thing. Now I do. I have weird ears that hurt if headphones press against them so I generally stick to buds but these have super comfy memory foam earpads. They feel like lovely pillows caressing your head. They look wicked awesome too with swappable speaker tags for a two tone look (blue with orange tags look incredible). The sound is excellent too with two 40mm precision balanced neodymium speakers, which is probably quite good. There’s a decent noise reducing inline mic, and the inline controls work for audio, track selection and phone for iOS mobile devices.

With non-Apple devices most of the controls still work but this really is designed with Apple product users in mind, or as I like to call them – God’s children. Quality, look, comfort and price are all really good here.

Razer DeathStalker Keyboard – £69.99

Have you ever wanted a keyboard that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of 24? I’m talking covert ops here. The DeathStalker is low profile in every sense of the word. While some gamers would demand a fully mechanical keyboard, the DeathStalker sports a slick set of low profile laptop style keys that are backlit with a very retro green light. As someone that is used to a laptop-style keyboard this certainly suits my preference and under the hood it has all the right numbers and tech. 1,000 Mhz polling, simultaneous 10 key anti-ghosting and programmable macro keys are all there for those that know about and demand such things. Myself, I really like that it glows but then I’m shallow like that.

Style over substance? Perhaps but sometimes it’s all about style and for the price it’s very neat. It’s also available in an Ultimate edition with a built in LCD touchpad display and some other bells and whistles for considerably more money.

Magic: The Gathering Theros Holiday Giftbox – £16.99

We’ll finish up this round with something for the Planeswalkers. My wife once accused me of enjoying the act of sorting out and boxing up Magic cards more than playing the game. She’s wrong but only just. I was really very excited to get my Theros Holiday Gift Box, firstly there are four booster packs in there and everyone loves opening booster packs; also that’s a good £14 worth of boosters so you can’t argue with the value here. The real draw of the Holiday Gift Box is the box itself though. It’ll easily hold 2,000+ cards and comes with separators for each card colour and labels to further divvy things up by type. You also get a handy pack of Theros basic lands and an alternative artwork foil, Karametra’s Acolyte card, for that Green Devotion deck you’ve been working on.

A great value gift that’s ideal for any Magic player but be wary of using the box to transport cards about too much as it’ll take a bit of a bashing and you’ll ruin the picture of Elspeth smashing up a hydra. It’s far more suitable for storing your collection at home.