Goat Simulator: 7/10

Background

I don’t think any of us gamers have the words to correctly describe what we see when we play or even hear the name of this game. Goat Simulator is a game that gives you a very simple goal. Be the best damn goat you can be! Run around, cause mischief, lick things, murder Deadmau5, you know, goat stuff. Goat Simulator was developed by Coffee Stain Studios and was initially released on April 1st, 2014 to Windows and has seen continued release on to current generation consoles.

Gameplay

The pure anarchistic gameplay of this game keeps on their toes the whole time through. The game features a physics simulator sandbox in which the player controls a simple goat and is set loose on a small town of people. The goal of the game is simply to do whatever you feel like. You can go blow up a gas station with a mighty roar, or you can go for the gold and dive into an empty pool filled with mattresses and trampolines and lots of possibilities.

You can play with friends and engage in multiplayer games and challenges or just work together to cause a colossal amount of chaos. The game also features numerous game modifiers called mutators that, when activated, will changes certain aspects of the game. Some will allow your goat to have new abilities, they can change the way the world works, or just make your goat all roided out to the point where nobody wants to mess with him. Many of these mutators are also references to other games such as the “Goatborn” mutator, which is an obvious reference to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s dragonborn, gives your goat the ability to roar in such a mighty way that it can destroy cars and send people (or other goats) flying miles away. Then there is the “Blue Streak” mutator which allows you to roll up in a ball and charge a dash attack that sends you flying straight ahead, much in the way that Sega’s golden boy Sonic the Hedgehog does. These mutators are numerous and are unlocked one-by-one after you accomplish certain conditions.

Multiplayer Madness

Where Goat Simulator truly shines is in its wild and chaotic local and online co-op! Playing a senseless goat who does as he please and wreaks havoc is only made better by 3 more of those same goats each with their own agenda of madness! You can each do your own separate thing on the map or engage in group activities. One goat can be bouncing on a bed in an empty pool going for a jump height record while another is being dragged around in a circle by your tongue by a donut-driving drag racer. The pure chaos caused by the numerous crazy possibly possessed goats. The antics and the fun that accompany them are also dependent on those who you are playing with.

Simple but Tricky

While I cannot deny the technical insufficiencies surrounding the game which can often leave one stuck in a wall or falling indefinitely after clipping through the floor of the world. This can be remedied by the “respawn” option in the pause menu. Goat Simulator screams a fun time full of wacky antics and unforeseeable outcomes. It is this wildly random humor and fun that makes even the most frustrating of technical glitches somewhat entertaining. I have often found myself stuck in a rock after flying into it at a high velocity. The controls are fairly wonky and the goat is not the easiest to control, much like a real goat I guess. Goat Simulator does use its physics engine for some very interesting happenings, such as…

Yep. This does in fact happen.