A CONSOLE game based on the Beatles is heralding a new wave in interactive mid-life crises for balding, insecure GQ readers, it was claimed last night.
Software firms have unveiled a series of desperately sad titles for the mid-40s male market, including an 'emotions-based platform game' inspired by the novels of Tony Parsons, and Time Team 3D Archaeological Dig, which comes in a limited edition presentation box with a lock of Tony Robinson's ear hair.
A spokesman for Rock Star Games said: "By focusing on massive robots, thrash metal and space stations full of zombies, we've been inadvertently alienating millions of paunchy middle managers.
"Yet these are the kind of people who'll fork out a grand on a 'collector's edition' U2 vinyl box set with an 'individually numbered' hologram of Bono's magic testicle in the wildly misguided belief that it might somehow make teenage girls want to sleep with them."
He added: "'They have now reached a stage in their lives where they are basically eight year-old children with Barclaycards."
In Tony Parsons' Legend of the Male Menopause for the PS3, players accumulate 'sensitivity points' for doing thoughtful things for their in-game 'life partners' with the ultimate mission of balancing fatherhood and fashionable footwear.
Greg Watson, a 46 year-old advertising account manager from London, said: "It's so great that there are finally games coming out for men who like to listen to Robert Elms while eating brioche."
But his 13-year-old son Jonas disagreed: "These games are fucking gay and retarded and make me hate my father even more than I already did, as if that was possible.
"The Beatles game is the worst. When I see my dad and his annoying, fat, hairy workmates fumbling the chords to Hey Jude on tiny multi-coloured plastic guitars, I want to just buy him a t-shirt that says 'my cock doesn't work anymore'."
He added: "But at least it distracts his attention from my raging smack habit. Swings and roundabouts."
