You Said You Were Sick of PS5's Sad Dad Sims, So You Better Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is | Push Square

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For years now, Sony has been criticised for its supposedly samey first-party software. You’ve probably seen that meme circulating on social media, which shows a trio of trees from God of War, The Last of Us, and Days Gone. It’s nonsense, of course, how do you even make different looking trees? But it obviously represents an underlying sentiment: that PlayStation’s exclusives all look and feel the same, with overly serious storylines and hyper-realistic visuals.

This Christmas, though, there’ll be none of that – and if you’ve ever been critical of the organisation’s output, this is a good opportunity to put up and shut up. Astro Bot is leading the way, of course: a charming platformer with pin-point controls, colourful visuals, and ear-worm audio. If it’s anything like previous entries, this will be straight out of the Nintendo playbook: whimsical, inventive from start-to-finish, and above all else fun.

We’ve already seen some corners of the web criticising the release’s price point, like platformers should inherently cost less than the latest first-person shooter or action adventure. While it’s ultimately up to you where you spend your hard-earned readies, it’s perhaps worth remembering there’s a reason Sony’s become known for its Sad Dad Sims: they bring home the bacon, and justify their exorbitant investment ten-fold. If you want more Astro Bot than angst, make sure the firm knows.

It's not the only light-hearted game the company’s got cooking this Christmas, by the way: LEGO Horizon Adventures may be inspired by a franchise that subscribes to a more familiar Sony schematic, but it’s clear Guerrilla and its development partners are having a lot of fun here. Voice actress Ashly Burch is having the time of her life making protagonist Aloy as silly as possible, and even the graphics – made up entirely of Denmark’s most famous toy-based export – are delightfully light-hearted.

This is Sony targeting families for once, something it hasn’t really done since the Buzz