Simulating your Xmas Shopping...

Recently I was sitting in the Felix office absentmindedly jingling the bells (I know sad, right?), when a fellow section editor sent me the link to the game Christmas Shopping Simulator. This immediately gave me purpose in life, and faster than a elf can wrap a present I had clicked on the link to the merriment. What I found there was about as much fun as a sack of coal.

In a blatant attempt to advertise itself, the store GAME has released this game in a bid to make fun of all those other quirky little games that have warmed our hearts like goat simulator and surgeon simulator. This is about as cool as the reindeers making fun of Rudolph for having a red nose.

Oh well, I thought to myself, given that it was free and in fact was Christmas themed, I felt like I shouldn’t be the Grinch about it. With an open mind I downloaded this onto one of the Felix machines and started shopping away in a virtual mall.

The game itself was incredibly simple to use, and I soon got to grips with it. However, it soon became very apparent how much this _Christmas Shopping Simulator _was ripped off from Goat Simulator. I mean, rag doll mode…really?

The control themselves were really clunky and sometimes I found it hard to remember how to actually do things. Furthermore there was the seemingly useless ability to fart. Yes, you could actually expel gas (a weird orange colour!), which served no other purpose except try and get some pity laughs out of you.

After I had gotten over the initial silliness that was the ragdoll mode, kicking things around and trying to evade the mall cops I attempted to actually play this ‘game’. I started off with the missions, but they were all pretty repetitive, and the arrow above my head that showed me where to go either made it incredibly easy or confusing as it would point to inaccessible areas of the map.

The achievements on the other hand weren’t too bad, and I actually found achieving most of them quite enjoyable. Sadly there wasn’t actually much of them, or content in general. I think I finished the entire game in a bit 2 hours, and that includes me dicking about.

What I have to say is that this game is actually incredibly broken. I found several ways to completely crash the game, get myself stuck in such ways that I had to restart! Also, the obvious advertising for GAME was really jarring and put me off playing a bit.

My advice is for you give this one a miss. Even if it is free it really isn’t worth the effort. Just go into a game store for the same experience, and you may actually be able to buy a proper game!