Written by Eric Hauter on 5/10/2021 for
PC
PS4
SWI
XBO
XBSX
Allow me to speak for a moment in defense of family-friendly gaming. For years, "kids' games" have gotten a bad rap from both older gamers and the gaming press. There is a long-standing stereotype that kids games - particularly those based on popular franchises – are calculated, cheap cash grabs. The assumption is that companies take familiar licensed characters and slap them into undercooked platformers and shooters, with the thought that they are "just for kids, so who cares?".
Well, I have two little kids, aged eight and four, so I care. And they care. My kids play games like Sackboy, Astro's Playroom, and It Takes Two. They will not be satisfied with the sort of cheap, rushed-to-market kids’ games that polluted the SNES and Genesis era of gaming. They want good games, and they know the difference between games that were created with care, and shovel-ware nonsense. My kids want to engage with the adult games that I am playing, even though these titles are often well beyond their abilities. Because I tend to review games at a very fast clip, I often move on from titles my kids enjoy well before they are ready to let them go. These are the same kids, after all, that watch entire seasons of shows on Netflix five or six times. They get attached to stuff, and it’s becoming increasingly important to them that they have games of their own that they can engage with for as long as they want.