When I agreed to review Goat Simulator for XBW I was prepared to get my snark on. I was geared up to rip it a new one, lament at how the democratisation of technology is a double barrel shot gun to the head of games quality, because on the one hand now everybody plays games so people make games anybody can play, and conversely allows anyone to make games so nearly everybody does, both which have affected the quality of the games we play.

But after playing Goat Simulator for a mere 5 minutes, my mind changed. Because, despite of everything, this game is FUN. Even though it’s full of flaws it’s still very much a fun game. And people have fun blowing up spaceships and jumping onto ledges and simulating armies of orcs and goblins, so why not have fun being a goat? After all, that’s meant to be the whole idea of games, right? It’s so ludicrous that it can’t do anything but make you laugh and smile.

The game is simple as hell. You’re a goat, and your goal is to create as much havoc as possible in the open world playground you find yourself in. Think of it as GTA, but instead of a homicidal maniac, you’re a goat. Or Skate, but instead of a skater, you’re a goat. You run around using the sticks to control the goat and the camera, and headbutt with the right trigger. Running into objects causes the physics engine to do its work, sending shit flying everywhere, racking up points. The more damage you do and the more tricks you string together, the higher your multiplier. Tricks include licking things with the X button, which acts as a kind of rubber band on items. You jump with the A button, meaning you can do some platforming and mid-air acrobatics. Press B and you fall into rag-doll. You can manual as well, that is walk on your forelegs, by flicking the sticks up and down, which is incredibly hard to pull off.

Part of the joy of the game is experimenting with the physics. Seeing what you can lick, hit and jump on. You can climb ladders and jump off highrises onto trampolines and be flung across the map on air vents. You can ragdoll in empty pools, effectively skating them. Of course, the game isn’t too well polished, and you can end up in some very odd situations. You can get your goat’s head stuck in things. Sometimes you’ll hit the right combination of things and get flung forever or through a building. In any other game this would be frowned upon, by the creators gleefully tell you if you do get weirdness beyond the normal, just respawn. It’s not like you have lives or a mission or anything to worry about losing.

Mutators are probably the best part of the game. What’s a mutator? Why mutators mutate your goat, obviously. By pressing Y, these allow you to do silly things like double jump, or dance, or spin really fast in a circle, or float, or tie rockets to your goat’s back, or turn into a giraffe. You can combine these all together, so pressing Y might make you shoot off your rockets and then float.

The game is full of surreal moments. It was, mutated into a giraffe, when I was laughing like a little kid on too much red cordial – as you run about, terrorising the humans who populate the world, they say stupid shit like “Never trust an animal with 4 hoofs” and “is that a goat?”. As the giraffe, hearing someone say “is that a goat?” is just perfect. Another surreal moment was finding an elevator and riding it to open to a rooftop nightclub. As I terrorised the club I ended up head butting the DJ, who is in a Deadmou5 helmet, and then found the helmet stuck on my head and the electrobeats pumping every time I pressed the Y button.

There are achievements in the game, with a long list of things to do when you start the game, as well as xbox live achievements. One problem with the in game achievements is they reset every time you start a new game, which feels a bit cheap. It doesn’t really record what you have done, so there’s absolutely no sense of progression. Luckily you keep your mutators. There are also goat collectables, and finding these unlocks more mutators. There are also timed races, where you can add your score to the global rankings. One nice thing about the Xbox One version is you can play local multiplayer. Obviously, this makes the ridiculous become even more so, as 4 player wreak havoc on an unsuspecting town.

But one of its major flaws is it is ugly. Not only do the physics do odd things to your goat’s head, stretching the textures weirdly, other game textures and models are pretty blocky and basic. It adds a kind of charm admittedly, but at the same time we are dealing with what is meant to be next generation gaming here. Not all games need to be super realistic, but games are meant to have a certain degree of finesse, and this lacks it.

It’s not a long lasting game either, as there’s no real sense of progression from session to session. Although there is a lot to explore and find – it is fun trying to get to the high places in the map and grab that collectable in the container – the two worlds you get to choose from do feel quite small compared to other open world games. There’s no real reason to return to the game, either. I’ve probably only played it for 4 hours, and that’s more than enough. I’ll show it to friends, have a laugh, but I’m not going to play it and come back to it later, like I do with FIFA or GTA, even for the xboxlive achievements.

Conclusion.
Ok, so how to rate this game? It’s buggy. It’s ugly. It’s ridiculous. It’s fun. It has a charm that is quite unique to this game. But is that enough?
Well, for $10 bucks, yeah.

Pros:
Unique charm
Surreal and funny
Lots to explore

Cons:
Very Ugly
No sense of progression
Gets boring after a few hours.

70/100