Some of us obsess about goats.
Running goats. Jumping goats. Goats jumping WHILE running.
Goats on wheels.
Goats with David Duchovny.
Towards assuaging/mitigating our obsession with goats, or more to the point to keep her own yard from becoming over-run with goats, our visionary Editor drew our attention to the Goat Simulator. Now Goat Simulator came out in 2014, but what can we say – some of us are a little late to the goat rodeo.
We figured a goat on the iPhone is probably worth two in the yard, or something, so off we went to download Goat Simulator. We personally aren’t gamer-types; we don’t have the gene(s) or the neural wiring or whatever it is that leads many fine, upstanding folks to clear level after level of Fruit Ninja or Dark Souls or Bioshock. We do however have an odd fondness for simulators1, so goats + simulator? We’re in!
Here’s the thing right out of the barn door though – while our Editor was all “hey here’s a goat simulator so you don’t need to acquire actual goats!”, Goat Simulator is not in fact centered on simulating HAVING goats – it’s simulating BEING a goat. So let’s take a quick trot through some of the goat-ventures at your fingertips while public-transiting to/from work or waiting for your Chemex to brew or sitting in the dentist’s waiting-room.
Being a goat, you obvs get to head-butt anything and everything – benches, trash cans, people, people in coffee shops2, tanker trucks. Pretty satisfying really.
Also, awesomely – you can use your goat-tongue to drag stuff (benches, people, barrels) around to hit other things with.
You can also lick things like mushrooms, to various effects and points-gathering.
Of course it wouldn’t be a true goat simulation if you couldn’t jump.
And there are any number of mini-quests and sometimes incomprehensible but amusing achievements to unlock:
In the end – Goat Simulator is both reasonably amusing once you get the hang of the twitchy controls AND allows us to tell the Editor that no in fact this does not negate the need for us to acquire actual factual goats for our real life menagerie. Everybody wins!
Do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to enjoy Ian Boudreau’s reviews of the John Cena’s Sexy High School Adventure Simulator and his list of top weird sims out there which includes Goat Simulator! ↩
and who among us hasn’t wanted to do THAT at some point? ↩