Platform Played On: PC
Rating: 8.5/10
Verdict: While it's almost guaranteed that Goat Simulator will improve once people mod it, the vanilla game itself is one of the funnest times you can have... for a short period of time.
For the first time ever on On The Gamely, watch a video I made of Goat Simulator:
http://youtu.be/GK2Rm9wi-cw
Goat Simulator is a game made in a few weeks for a jam. In it you play as a goat and your only goal is to destroy things and get points. This would be a rather bland game if it were just for that, but Goat Simulator goes the extra mile by being a game that is intentionally buggy, outside of actual game-breaking bugs which the developer tried to fix.
It's the type of game that brings up questions and causes controversy because we are expected to pay for a game that is glitchy? The game knows what it is, but there have been games in the past that tried to be "intentionally bad" for laughs but ended up just being bad games... so what's stopping Goat Simulator from repeating history? However, in the developer's "defense," he straight up game out and said not to buy the game and to go spend your money on something else.
I'm going to say this right now, though, on the record: the only problem I have with this game is that the fun doesn't last. That's it. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I got to spend with it up to a certain point. Experiences like these don't come along very often.
So let's tackle that issue for a second before I gush about how fun the game is. It starts you out in a small area populated with a store or two, a gas station, a take on Stonehenge called Goathenge, a little castle, some houses, a low-gravity building, a crane and some more stuff that I don't feel like listing because you get the idea. The idea is to run around and be as creative as possible when causing hell for the people. You do back and front flips, lick things (you can carry things around when you lick them), ragdoll yourself, climb, jump, headbutt and there may even be a jetpack in there somewhere. Just a normal day for a goat, really.
Believe me when I tell you, Goat Simulator is a blast for an hour or so. The game is so buggy that even climbing a ladder can be really funny. The ragdoll physics are outstanding because you never know how you're going to land. Kick a ball and it may fly where you didn't intend it to at all. Headbutt someone and watch them fly through the air. It's never quite clear what's going to happen when you do something, and that's where the fun is. Run around the village and experiment. Even if you've done something before, do it again because the results may vary slightly. In the video above I actually destroyed the gas station while I was in mid-air. How is that possible? I don't know. But it happened.
But then once you've exhausted your options because the area is so small... there's not a lot to go back to. Sure, I guess it'd be fun to show a friend that hasn't seen it, but there's very little content here. It's the same place over and over, doing the same things, and the joy of watching how you flop around does wear thin. It's a game that's meant to be played in one sitting, for an hour or so, and then remembered fondly for what it is. You can't drag out this experience.
It does have modding options, but I don't often factor modding into the final score. With modding, I'm sure you'll be able to ignore the latter part of my previous paragraph because there will be more to come back to, but when I review games I just review the game as it is when I play it, and acknowledge that the game may get improved later on when other people start tampering with it.
It's only ten dollars, so it's not like you're getting nickel and dimed here, though some people may argue it should be less. I don't, I think ten dollars is a good price for a type of game we don't often see. Like I said, the modding will improve the experience ten fold, so the 8.5 is a misleading score in some respects -- but don't get it twisted... Goat Simulator is not a
No comments:
Post a Comment