Goat Simulator 3 — So Weird… Yet so Enjoyable

It’s actually Goat Simulator 2

First off, I want to say that the initial plan was to review a game called Scorn, the aesthetics of which are inspired by H.R. Giger, one of the greatest modern artists of recent times and whose art is notorious for being disturbingly terrifying (seriously, don’t look this guy up), among other dark things. It didn’t work, so the contingency plan was to play Evil Dead: The Game and hopefully find it to be a worthy alternative to Dead by Daylight, which I am obsessed with. That didn’t work either, and I realised that these games don’t work on old computers. Long story short, I discovered Goat Simulator 3, and good thing, too, because this game is so much fun.

This game is the sequel to the infamous Goat Simulator that was released way back in 2014, a game that was supposedly innovative for its satirical take on the “simulator” subgenre (or whatever you feel like calling it) and its chaotic gameplay intentionally filled with glitches to amplify the chaos in it. Many people liked it, and now there’s a sequel. I never had the opportunity to play the first game, so I decided to give the sequel a chance, and there’s too much chaos to go around.

I have many things to say about Goat Simulator 3, which is technically the second game in the series (the intentional typo is part of the satire). Still, it is imperative that people be aware that this game is chaotically fun. However, even though it was chaotically fun, the game is not perfect despite the multiple features scattered throughout the sandbox that is this game’s world. Anyways, here’s what it was like…

Everybody in this game is immortal

Now this game is a satire, as I said before. Still, the characters in the game take it up a notch by poking fun at the game’s design, and this is most evident in the very beginning of the game, where a character tells you how things work around here, reminding you that you are an immortal goat that’s about to wreak havoc on the streets.

And that is precisely what I did the moment the intro ended; I just walked around on my goat hooves and started head-butting every human that crossed my path, launching them into the air. Some guy came and kicked me from behind, so what did I do in response? By putting a saddle on and forcing him to ride me, you can do that in the game, not just humans but also animals. Anyways, this game gets weirder. Later, I would set myself on fire and shoot fireballs from my horns, launching everything in every direction. Later on, I would acquire the power of electricity by bumping into broken electrical devices, and I would shock people and toss them into the air. As you can tell, this game primarily encourages you to be a jerk to everything, but the humans don’t seem to mind so much, judging by their reactions. I guess that’s justified considering they always come back to life, and there is so much more chaos to go around, such as shooting lasers from your eyes or creating a miniature black hole to collect all the humans and all the junk that’s about into a single swirling spot and then release it in an explosion. But the funniest moment that made me realise how hilariously enjoyable this game is was when I zapped a car to accelerate forward into a lake. At that moment, I just cracked up in laughter because of how sudden everything was. You can get the impression that this game encourages you to go around and do whatever you want instead of paying attention to the task at hand — the game has missions in it. I’m not sure what these missions are since I never really minded the real objective that the game wants you to perform, which leads me to the problem I have with the game.

The game is fantastic, and even though there are missions and whatnot, they don’t feel important when the game discreetly encourages you to do whatever you want, and there is a lot to do in this game. More so, the lack of narrative and a proper story doesn’t provide any incentive to invest deep interest in the game. There’s nothing to propel the goat into a particular direction, as it’s just more fun to goof around. This means that the moment you exhaust all the features, there’s nothing left to do because the missions need to be more. But hey, it’s still an enjoyable game.

In Conclusion…

So… Goat Simulator 3 is surprisingly more fun than I anticipated, especially for a game I only played as a contingency. In this game, there’s no real objective, no real mission; no real task that’s important enough. In this game, you are nothing more than an immortal goat causing terror and havoc on the nonchalant humans that move around you. You go around and do whatever you want. Cause havoc? Sure, why not. Do missions? If you feel like it, then knock yourself out. This is what’s great about the game, you go around and destroy stuff, and it lets you chill while doing so because there’s nothing truly important in this game, not even the goat itself.

So, I’m saying that if you haven’t played the first game, like me, then at least play Goat Simulator 3, which is technically Goat Simulator 2 but whatever. Anyways, play it and wreck some carnage, as there’s an abundance of that.