I had to figure out if I could lick that hang glider.
You’ll have to forgive me, I should have provided a bit of context. I was simulating what it’s like to be a goat through Coffee Stain Studio’s Goat Simulator. Like any normal goat, I could bleat, aggressively ward off humans, and use my nine-foot tongue to lick and stick to virtually anything in sight. I’ve been to plenty of petting zoos and I’ve met quite a few goats along the way. All I remember is that they have terrifying rectangle eyes and don’t typically battle the ducks and chickens when I try to feed them food pellets. That’s the extent of my knowledge, and it doesn’t seem to conflict with the idea of a goat climbing a giant industrial crane a quarter-mile into the sky and trying to jump off it in order to lick a man’s hang glider.
Naturally, I made contact with the hang glider and went along for the wide. My goat head spun around about a hundred-and-forty times, suggesting the elasticity of goat necks goes far beyond my previous understanding. Eventually I got tired of swinging along like an organic wrecking ball and let go. I fell five-hundred or whatever feet to the ground and walked away, casually celebrating my immortality. There were plenty of other things to do in this small town, anyway, and I couldn’t let a single activity consume all of my time.
Goat Simulator simulates the daily activities of a goat the same way Surgeon Simulator 2013 replicates the grievous complexity of brain surgery. It accurately simulates nothing about being a goat, handling the subject matter with the cartoon responsibility of equipping pants full of dynamite. Mechanics include the ability to jump, to lick, to scream, and to charge or back-kick depending on your position. While all of those actions are feasibly possible for goats in the real world, the button to instantly send your goat into a full ragdoll mode is exclusive to this particular simulation. Ragdoll can also be engaged automatically, should your goat fly down a waterslide or directly impact a moving vehicle. No worries, really, as your goat can un-ragdoll with the simple touch of a button.
What exactly you do in Goat Simulator is open to interpretation. Objectively it’s packed with all kind of goals, some concrete and other score-based. The quest-log, if you can call it that, lists simple challenges like attaining a certain height, generating specific air time, or jumping over a fence. Virtually any action taken also creates points and builds into a multiplier. Everything generates points. I got points for licking a car. I got points for air-licking a car. I got points for scaring the shit out of people protesting penis-shaped food. Goat Simulator accounts for virtually anything you can do and mindlessly hands out points for it.
The other means of enjoying Goat Simulator, as strange as it sounds, relates to open world games like Fallout 3 or Skyrim. Seeing what kind of insane shit is out there is an alluring call to adventure, especially with after realizing almost everything in sight was generated for the explicit purpose of making you laugh. The geography of Goat Simulator is relatively small, but what it loses in size it makes up for in outrageous context. Best of all? Goat Simulator recognizes and rewards silly experimentation; there are special one-off points for a ton of specific instances, the likes of which I’m reluctant to spoil out of fear of robbing Goat Simulator of its crown jewels. What’s in this house? What’s down that mystery tube thing? What do I do with this bacon? Why can’t my goat stop farting? Everything in its tiny existence is created and designed to entertain the player.
Goat Simulator is an honest joke; the question is whether or not its laughs are worth ten dollars. There isn’t a whole lot of measurable game here, or at least not in comparison to similar joke-games like Octodad: Dadliest Catch or Surgeon Simulator 2013. It’s a world built around discovery, either through its outrageous context or observing the results of obscene physics accidents. For me that translated to about three hours until I exhausted the available content, minus a few achievements I still can’t seem to figure out. That being said, the density of ridiculous entertainment packed inside those three hours would have easily justified a ten dollar price tag. It’s dumb, it’s funny, and it’s completely straightforward about its intentions. Next to that video about goats screaming like humans, it’s probably the best goat-related piece of entertainment on the Internet.
Note: Also check out Kevin Hudson’s proper review of Goat Simulator!
