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Goat Simulator 3 review: more than the sum of its fart noisesHoof-hearted
Hoof-hearted
Goat Simulator 3 - Announcement TrailerWatch on YouTube
Goat Simulator 3 - Announcement Trailer
This game is a whole lot bigger than the last one. The goating takes place on a giant map — similar in scale to something like aGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas— with unexpectedly detailed cities full of roaming NPCs, sprawling suburbs, and open farmland to roam about in, all of it peppered with events to unlock, new clothes to wear and weird things to discover.
Barely holding everything together is Goat Simulator 3’s set of emergent open-world systems, which curses the game’s NPCs with a degree of simulated consciousness. Whereas pedestrians in the previous game would bumble around mindlessly, they’re now able to feel fear, anger, and delight at the sudden appearance of a goat. Strangers will stop to take a selfie, or try to pet you, or kick you. Police officers can now spot your goat-crimes and haul you off to prison, though their rudimentary AI brains often struggle to get you into the back of a police car without first tripping over something or accidentally arresting one another.
There’s aRocket League-style football game, and a fast-paced climbing challenge in which the floor is rising lava, but the ability to equip whatever gear you like to give your goat an advantage means this aspect of Goat Simulator 3 is just as silly and unserious as the rest of the game. Goat Simulator 3 will not be troubling an esports arena any time soon, but it’s fun to hoof about with a friend for a while and share in the simple pleasure of headbutting a wheelie bin.
Online or offline, the goat-based whimsy wears thin pretty quickly, but what’s surprising about Goat Simulator 3 is how much stuff there is past that point. Once you’re a few hours in you’ll have stopped noticing how the goat sometimes scoots along the ground on their butt instead of their usual running animation, but you’ll still be enjoying the bizarre encounters the world repeatedly presents you with.
A catalogue of mini-objectives and quests gives the otherwise aimless sandbox a bit of a backbone too, and even though tasks can be broadly categorised into moving things from one place to another, or collecting stuff, or licking things, there’s variety and creativity to be found in each. Goat Simulator 3 has limited appeal baked right into it, but it’s unfair to dismiss the game as purely YouTube-baiting viral silliness. Underneath all of the goat nonsense and fart noises, there’s an intelligently constructed toy chest. Underneath that? More nonsense and fart noises.
