 Twas the morning of Christmas and all through the house, everyone was shouting because the Bluey game is horrible! This was the video topic that you wanted us to cover the most from our recent poll but there's another reason why we felt the need to address this subject because over the next few years plenty of unsuspecting parents will be looking up details on Bluey the video game to try and decide whether it's worth picking it up for their Australian cartoon dog obsessed kids. The short answer is no. Absolutely not. Put the game down, step away carefully and then buy something better. You'll probably be better off with the free Bluey games on the BBC website or on a mobile device. Frankly you'd be better off with an infestation of tickle crabs or bingo in a leopard onesie. This game is more annoying than Unicorps. To a certain extent, Bluey the video game fits into the retro revival trend of modern indie games. Stardew Valley reimagines Harvest Moon for a modern audience. Undertale does the same for Earthbound to an extent. Bluey the video game is the modern revival of E.T. the extraterrestrial for the Atari. It's a shallow, short, tremendously glitchy mess that was rushed out for the holiday period to trick unsuspecting parents into spending too much money for a low effort product, purely due to brand recognition. Here then is the story of how the Bluey game ruined our Christmas. Our daughter is something of a gaming expert, as much as any kid between the age of seven and ten can be. When our Nintendo Switch yearly review statistics came in, we were astonished and a bit dismayed to discover that she'd played 300 hours of Splatoon 3 this year. If Nintendo had any interest in supporting esports, rather than burning all their bridges with the community, we'd have a future superstar on our hands. The problem with being extremely well-practiced and frankly worryingly talented at games is that she does not suffer fools gladly. Our worst family gaming experience, until Bluey at least, was Stray, the brilliant dystopian cyberpunk game in which you play as a cat. Our daughter really wanted to watch us play. It was a bit too scary for her to want to control the cat in some of the sections, but our daughter really wanted to watch us play those, and woe betied us if we didn't play it exactly the way she wanted. Meanwhile, our son is too small to really get video games. He's generally happy to watch. Our daughter got Animal Crossing New Horizons for Christmas, and she's been having lots of fun with her brother, dressing up her character as his favourite Disney characters. Elsa, Anna, Luke and Leia from Star Wars, somehow those are all Disney characters, even if Mickey Mouse isn't anymore in a rare win for the public domain. So, when the Bluey game was first announced, it rocketed to the top of our daughter's Christmas list, and it seemed like the kind of game we'd all get something out of. There are four of us and four members of the Healer family. Perfect. What better couch co-op exists for a family that's trying to wean their daughter off of Splatoon? Shortly after the kids aren't pre-ordered the game as a present, the first reviews came out. It was not pretty. Bluey the video game was, apparently, a buggy glitchy mess that lacked any substance. Oh dear. So it was with some trepidation that we approached the game on Christmas morning. Sure, the reviews weren't glowing, but how bad could it be? There are four levels in Bluey the video game. Each of these levels is designed to last exactly as long as an episode of the cartoon, meaning you'll wrap up the story mission in around half an hour. Then you can either play mini games or explore five different maps to find collectibles. Why Chilly has left three hockey sticks at the beach is never adequately explained. The point is it's not going to take you very long to see everything the game has to offer and to get absolutely sick of it. That said, a game with limited substance is not the worst thing in the world for the game's target audience of young children. Kids are good at creating their own fun and there is some joy to be had in wandering around, playing the limited mini games such as Keepie Uppie and Floor is Lava. The problem is that the game is clearly very unfinished. Bear a thought for the poor quality control team who worked on this, because they definitely weren't getting paid enough. At one point, one of our characters fell through the floor and disappeared out of bounds. When the game reloaded, that same character got stuck in mid-air, unable to move at all. Sometimes these glitches are funny, but when the physics is so bad that none of us can manage a particularly tricky jump to get a slice of collectible Pavlova off the top of a lamp post, our daughter's patience runs out. Pretty soon she's getting increasingly worked up, frustrated that nobody can do the very simple job in front of her and we have to try and calmly explain that it's not that we're doing it wrong, it's simply that the game is poorly made. The concept of a game, rather than the player being at fault, is not something she's really had to deal with before. It had never occurred to her that a game might actually just be bad. She's lost a little tiny piece of innocence as a result of that play session. Meanwhile, do you know what it's like to try and get four characters with an awful camera to the right part of a level when one of the players has never played a video game before? Naturally, our son wanted to play, and naturally, he has no idea how to use a controller. Normally we hand him ones that aren't connected to the console in front of him so that he can imagine he's playing along. This is a fundamental problem with how the Bluey game is constructed. The content is so banal and simple that it will only appeal to an audience that's too young to be able to engage with the control scheme. Again, you're probably better off with a simple free Bluey mobile game. It feels like the same amount of effort went into this as the offerings on the BBC website, but what developers have made is thoroughly unsuitable to the needs of players. Bluey the video game could, at the very least, do with the kind of auto-play function that you see in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the ability for young players to engage with the game as much or as little as they feel comfortable. Instead, the game asks far too much of its players, even more experienced players who have the hassle of controlling both their own character and their child's character and struggling their way past all manner of glitches and bugs. This is to say nothing of the ill-thought-out controls. For some reason, the interact button and the menu button are the same. So if you're not in exactly the right spot for a contextual button prompt, everyone's game gets paused. With four people all trying to touch things around the level at any given time, you'll end up spending a lot of time paused unnecessarily. And naturally, the contextual interact button prompts don't ever seem to correlate with the on-screen indicators. Because why would they? That would require sensible playtesting and polish. What makes this all the more baffling is that there's a dedicated kick button. The most commonly pressed button has to share with the menu. But kick gets its own button? We don't even know what the kick button is supposed to do. Is it useful for KiPiUpy? Not really, you just need to touch the balloon to bounce it into the air. The kick button serves no purpose beyond taking up space on an already oddly complicated control layout. Plus, it's somewhat disturbing to see Bandit, the world's best fictional dad, kicking his children. That doesn't feel right. Bluey, the video game, is the latest in a long line of low-effort, cheap, shoddy cash grabs that trade off an existing and popular brand to squeeze a few dollar bucks out of unsuspecting parents. What makes this one so egregious, though, is the fact that all other Bluey media is of such a tremendously high quality. Bluey is, let's all be real here, the best thing on television at the moment. Possibly ever. The simple but genius move to make a show that appeals to both young children and their parents at the same time is simply wonderful. Kids enjoy a lesson about taking turns and playing fairly, and parents weep in sympathy with Chili as she tries desperately to get the kids out the door so they're not late for a play date. The door is right there! All you have to do is walk through it! Why is this so hard? Then there are the moments of genuine heartfelt emotion as parents and children come together to share something magical. Bluey teaches her dad just as much about the world and crucially appreciating the joy of imagination and nature as he ever teaches her about hard work. Bluey, as a show, is so much more than just a monkey in the rain. It's disappointing then that the game lacks so much of the same wit and charm and self-awareness. This isn't a game for the whole family with content for both younger and older players. It's hard to figure out who this game is for at all for that matter. It's not for parents who will find it more annoying than entertaining. It's not for children who will either be baffled by the control scheme or utterly frustrated that nothing in the game works should. This game then, like ET before it, is really only good for one thing. Being buried in the New Mexico desert and dug up 30 years later by ironic archaeologists. This is a cautionary tale and not something that should be purchased even on deep sail. Play a free Bluey tablet game instead. Or better yet, turn off the screens and spend some time playing or drawing or otherwise engaging with your kids. Bob Bilby would want it that way. The moral of the story? Don't pre-order. Wait for the reviews instead. Just because something looks good on paper, it doesn't mean it's going to live up to your expectations.