Ask anyone what their favourite bit of the festive season is, and they will all say the exact same thing; Christmas shopping. Being quite stressed and wandering round a vast shopping centre packed with expensive tat and angry, bitter people is what Christmas is all about. And now, you don't even have to leave the house to experience those mild thrills and that dizzying normality, because Christmas Shopper Simulator is finally here.
Playing the game itself is an experience that is impossible to comprehend or explain (presuming you've never been Christmas shopping before). 11 playable missions see you dodge, weave, bounce, stumble, trip, fall and get-stuck-in-a-corner-for-a-bit around a fully expansive modern day shopping centre - the grey tedium and soulless empty feeling of which is recreated with eye-watering accuracy. After playing for just three minutes, you feel as though you've lost hours. And hours.
With each fast-paced mission you buy presents for your family and friends, whilst collecting points, achieving achievements and trying to avoid the game glitching quite heavily. Some of the tasks are so fiendishly puzzling, it feels as though they're not really supposed to be like that and maybe the developers have missed something and forgotten to finish them off. In a good way. This is a challenging simulator, made even more tricky by the constant nagging feeling that your life is slowly ebbing away.
As you explore the shops and shelves stocked with goods, you can kick, pick up, throw and knock over basically everything. This is not only a world class game, but also a very effective way of smashing up a shop out of sheer frustration without receiving a custodial sentence. And every single glitch in the game is rich and detailed, making you almost grateful that no attempt seems to have been made to fix them at all.
In short, this simulator is in many ways mankind's greatest achievement. And in other ways it isn't. Does it beat actually going Christmas shopping for real? Well, if you prefer your Christmas shopping quite laggy, with absolutely loads of glitches and a secret button that makes fart noises, then yes, it definitely does.
9.5/10 (I thought the box could have been a bit nicer).
