Goat Simulator (Xbox 360) Reviews

Goat Simulator is a very modern phenomenon. Starting as a joke project by a small team and deliberately released with bugs and glitches intact, it quickly went viral and gained fame as several prominent Youtube personalities used it in their videos. Now available for the 360, is the joke still as funny the second time around?

On the surface the game plays like a mix between Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Grand Theft Auto, giving you two sandbox levels where you are free to explore, perform tricks and create chaos to gain points. There is no end goal as such, just to fulfil a series of challenges or get the highest score possible. After breaking out of your starting pen you'll find plenty of opportunities to send people flying with a headbutt, grab objects with your tongue, blow up petrol stations or ragdoll off the highest building. At first there is some amusement to be had in causing said destruction as well as running around the map and finding the hidden areas such as stonehenge, a sacrificial pit or a rooftop party. It isn't long however before the main problem presents itself – there is no game.

The reason why causing chaos is fun is that there are ramifications for it. Sure, you could go on a rampage in Saints Row or GTA, or enjoy some destruction physics in Red Faction or Just Cause 2 but you'll have to deal with increasing waves of enemies coming after you, and that was only ever a distraction from the main story. Here you can do what you want, yet no one ever reacts and objects all respawn soon after, so there is never any sense of satisfaction. If you'd have had Police or Animal Control officers trying to recapture you that would have provided some variety or challenge, but everyone just gets back up and continue as if nothing happened. You could argue that Minecraft or Sim City have no defined goal, but you can create a map and play the game in any way you see fit, and have to plan ahead to conserve resources. Here you are limited to exploration and temporary destruction. Music and graphics are also poor, with the same half dozen or so character models used repeatedly, although given the game's lack of budget this can be forgiven to a degree.

It suffers that common physics problem that nothing has any weight, and the lack of control means you cannot do anything with precision. You do for example get a jetpack, but instead of allowing you to explore the levels it just fires you off in completely random directions, making it completely pointless. There is a skate rink in the starting map but you'll be lucky to even get to the top once. You do also get several mutators to but aside from the double jump and angel goat which lets you slow your descent they're all either visual only or completely useless (such as the giant goat that means you're barely able to move). So if you had visions of setting up a line of obstacles and using a car to bowl them over or building a container out of barrels then you'll be disappointed. Within 30 minutes you'll have seen everything the game has to offer.

Achievement wise you'll most likely gain some by accident, and most of the others are collectables and easter eggs that can easily be found with a guide. There is one very frustrating one however, which involves getting 10 points on the in game Flappy Bird clone. Unfortunately the controls lag and the hit detection is atrocious, making this far more frustrating than the ratio suggests and the only one that may prevent you obtaining the 1000g

Overall Goat Simulator just feels cynical. The whole thing seems to exist as Youtube let's play fodder, where people can record themselves shouting, overreacting to everything and telling everyone how OMG random it is. The initial novelty will wear off very quickly and you're left with nothing to do once the game has dealt its very limited hand. You might argue that it's unfair to be so harsh on an indie game, but Minecraft, FTL and Kerbal Space Program were made on tight budgets and what people can do with them is incredible. There is local co-op for up to 4 people where will extend the game's lifespan slightly, but the lack of win states makes it pretty redundant. Humour in games is difficult to pull off, and glitches are most amusing when something unexpected and tonally inconsistent happens, like a NPC changing voice in Oblivion or the infamous horse woman in Red Dead Redemption. Here it just feels like an excuse not to have to finish their game. If there's one thing the creators did well it was market it, but there's no reason to pay money to experience this yourself.

For those who just want to have fun alone, with friends, maybe invite that hot new goat in Marketing to come over and play... Goat Simulator has it all. Mostly.

You play as a goat. This goat does whatever the hell it wants. It can jump on trampolines. It can survive a head-on collision with a truck. It can ride a bike. It can sacrifice party-goers at a barbecue to Satan.

There is no plot, no characters, no linear structure to this game. Goat Simulator has two maps to explore with the goat. It's an open-world environment, free of consequences and, more often than not, physics. You run around, licking objects, running into things, finding new and interesting things to do with your goat. Take it into a house, find a bedroom, mess around with your goat. Whatever. No judgement here.

Goat Simulator plays like a joke. You can use LB to make your goat bleat. Pressing B makes it collapse on the ground like those fainting goats you've seen on YouTube. But Goat Simulator is no joke! Where this game comes into its own is its inclusion of mutators, easter eggs, easy achievements, and endless hours of fun if you're in the right mindset. One mutator allows you to be Queen of the goats and drop dead goats from the sky. (Because that's what goat queens do, apparently.) One allows you to roar like a dragon and cause foolish humans and objects to flee in terror. Wanna go fast like Sonic? There's a mutator for that. Ever wonder what happens when you strap a jet pack to a goat? One mutator allows you to become a giraffe ("tall goat"), the most elegant and noble of all beasts. You can combine mutators to maximize the fun. There's a co-op mode, and you can try various tricks and stunts to score points.

Now, a lot of players will find this fun for a few minutes and call it quits there. It's good for a few chuckles, and that's it, some argue. Some think it's just annoying, fodder for dumb kids to post reaction videos to on FaintingGoatTube. And yes, it is that. But the fun doesn't come from watching others play Goat Simulator. It's an experience, and needs to be played to be believed.

The game is far from perfect, though. The fun can wear off pretty quickly if the premise (i.e., playing as a goat) doesn't excite you to the very core of your being. The lack of online co-op is disappointing, as well as no save feature for point scoring. Those who want a serious gaming experience need not apply.

For achievement hunters, the achievements are fairly easy. You'll acquire a lot of them just be messing around. You could get most of them within an hour, but I had so much fun playing the game I've deliberately spaced them out to get maximum enjoyment from the game.

In conclusion, this may not be the game for you, but it's a couple hours of fun, not without its flaws, but so endearing it's a perfect cure-all to a bad day.
4/5

Finally.

Going off on a bit of a tangent here, I only review games that I have earned every achievement in. Including the DLCs. I put off this game's DLCs for nearly ten years because I despised nearly every moment of the base game. Last year I went and made a little video on each DLC on my YouTube channel. Shameless plug, I know, I don't care. I have waited so long to tear this game asunder.

Goat Simulator is the game that spawned off so many other knock offs, some of which I have also played. DEEER simulator, Untitled Goose Game, what ever the case may be, I attribute Goat Simulator to kicking off what I call the "random animal does random things" series of games. To my knowledge a game with a squirrel holding a gun came out not too long ago as well. Games that really, if it weren't for the "randomness" to them, you'd probably never play them at all.

So what do you do in Goat Sim? Among other things, you simulate being a goat. Sort of. There's also a Tony Hawk-type of stunt mechanic that kind of only works half the time. And as it turns out "only works half the time" is the heart and soul of this game. Even things that seemed were supposed to break as part of a joke, seem more so to break because they just weren't programmed very well.

Speaking of jokes, this game has a lot of them. Practically because it just is one. But most of the jokes go something like "random thing referenced, but slightly off and in a shocking way." I don't mean to be a stick in the mud, but man that formula for humor gets old so fast. Like, for having the absurdist foundation of going over the top with the things you can do in a game called Goat Simulator, the best you can do with your jokes is just reference whatever else you think might be popular with whoever plays your game? At one point you find ninja turtles in a sewer. Do you get it? Do you get the joke? It's a reference to that hit franchise TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

Now admittedly, I did actually find the PAYDAY DLC for this game pretty great. That pack made a decent amount of use to the absurd premise of the gameplay. What wasn't great were the other three packs I had to wade through to get to that one. MMO Simulator is mostly fine, lots of predictable jokes but it's nothing overtly bland. The zombies DLC, oh man, it sucks. I don't even know why it's zombies related, most of the gameplay and puzzles and jokes have nothing to do with zombies. The Space DLC was the one I was most hopeful for, since I love space, but even that was pretty meh. They had your average Star Wars/Trek joke, and actually flying a spaceship in the game was so infuriating that it took all the fun out of it.

The achievements list is pretty brutal. I wouldn't say there's anything impossible to do, but it takes a long time to 100% this game. And let me tell you, you feel every second in the worst way possible. Hunting down collectibles, getting lucky, achievements that require you to get familiar with bad controls, they're all there. And they're all made worse by the fact that while trying to unlock them you're playing Goat Simulator, God's punishment to mankind once he got wind that the 2015 version of the Fantastic Four was being made.

Avoid this game at all costs. I know I may come off as someone who just doesn't get the jokes, but I promise you, other games that imitated this one did it better. Other games that were trying to be Goat Simulator ended up being better on accident, because you'd have to be a great developer to intentionally make something as bad as this. I play games because I love them. I love bad games. I love great games. Whatever Goat Simulator was supposed to be, I hated it.

Overall Score: 17/100