The GOAT of all Goat games.
Goat Simulator 3 had me in stitches from its humor and pop-culture references to the brilliant chaos that I, an unassuming goat, would cause in its delicious playground of an open world. The sheer variety in its quests, customization, to its quirky gameplay, constantly kept me entertained for around 8-10 hours, concluding in an absolutely bat-shit finale that felt completely at home with this bizarre and goofy adventure.
Goat Simulator 3 is constantly aware of what it is aiming to do, hell, there isn’t even a Goat Simulator 2 as developer Coffee Stain North simply jumped from one to three just for the hell of it. Everything the game throws at you is meant to be in on the joke, especially a glance-at-the-camera line of dialogue in the game’s final moments that I laughed out loud at. In fact, I don’t know if a game in the past few years has actually made me laugh this much. While there are a few lines of dialogue that certainly made me chuckle, or even cringe, it’s the crazy shit that you can do as a goat here that constantly had me laughing until my sides hurt. Charging up a headbutt and seeing my target fly across the map never once got old.
Within seconds of starting Goat Simulator 3, you find yourself riding in the back of a wagon, pulled by a tractor driven by a farmer that is detailing the lay of the land, explaining that you, a goat, have now been captured after your spree of terror from the first game has come to an end. This scene is not only a play on the start of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but the farmer himself eventually says to get out of his “Skyrim cart” and go explore the nearby goat tower, as it might very well contain a portal to some mystical goat place.
To no surprise, the goat towers lead you to your very own goat castle. As you complete quests out in its fairly large open world, you’ll upgrade the ranks and expand out the living space within your castle’s walls. While the expanded castle doesn’t really do much on a gameplay level, it was fun seeing little remnants of my adventures pop up around its open space, giving me visual progress of my path of destruction.
Goat Simulator 3 also allows you and three other friends to wreak havoc all across this city by not only taking part in each other’s quests but also through a barrage of multiplayer-only events that are fun but become less engaging the more you interact with them. Still, the chaos that can ensue here is elevated even more when you have a few co-conspirators along for the ride. More people means more chaos and more chaos means more fun, it’s really just simple math.
From its very first minutes, Goat Simulator 3 allows you to explore the open world in its entirety from the very start. You’ll track down goat towers to provide some fast travel points, synchronizing with them to reveal more of the map, and then take on the variety of quests that appear all around you. These quests range from destroying “the” one ring, infiltrating a cosplay event, to even running for presidential office, dragging undecided voters into the voting booth by your very long and sticky tongue.
While most quests are as simple as finding those three voters and hauling them into the voting booth, some quests can be a bit too vague in what they want from you or simply take a chunk of time to complete, such as one where you have to track down several dozen moving boxes around a pretty big neighborhood, a quest that feels designed more for multiplayer than that of a solo experience. Then you have quests where you mess around with the controls of a megaton nuke, tracking down bigfoot, to one where you interact with three bells to recreate the Imperial March tune, granting you a double-sided lightsaber for your troubles.
The quests themselves can come across as rather dumb and largely silly, but the hijinks that ensue because of them can often be the best parts of this game. For example, the quest where you show up at a cosplay convention seemed simple enough; create an outfit. You would run around the event trying to find something for the head, body, and weapon, and whatever you found would complete the quest. While that premise is somewhat bland and easily done within a couple of seconds, it was when everyone in attendance suddenly cosplayed as that very creation that I truly saw the brilliance in what this game was giving me.
While you’ll have a ton of quests to tackle, you’ll also have what are called Instincts. These bite-sized challenges are rather simple to complete and as you progress, you’ll constantly have more to work towards. These range from performing a simple backflip, attaching rockets to three people in a row, to using a clothing launcher on the police. And, as you collect more and more clothing items and variable weapons, you’ll unlock more Instincts that relate to those particular items.
Customizing your goat not only changes what they are wearing or what they look like, but as mentioned, some items can have gameplay ramifications as well. First off, you can choose your character that you’ll be taking with you through most of your adventure. You’ll unlock a variety of different models such as a large rhino or a mutated banana-man, but it’s a safe bet that most people are going to swap back to the goat for the bulk of the adventure. You can select your fur type, hat, back, body, and feet items, as well as the type of horns you’ll have as well.
Where it becomes a gameplay difference comes in a variety of different items across each category. From being able to throw Captain America’s ricocheting shield or shooting fireballs via the Eye of Sauron strapped to your back, you also have a rocket pack, glider, and butterfly wings that allow you to glide, float, or soar throughout the sky. While some of these items are found out in the open world, many can be bought through the cash you’ll earn through your chaotic shenanigans. And, as far as I can tell, these items are bought only with money you earn in-game, and there is a ton to unlock here.
Apart from a variety of ramps to track down and a ton of golden goat statues to discover, there is a decent amount of content here to take on, even apart from just running around as a goat, rhino, or hammerhead shark on a skateboard. The quests do give a bit of structure to what this game wants from you, but the playground element that has been built here is what is designed around keeping you playing well after the credits, but your mileage on that will vary, especially if you don’t have anyone else to join in on the fun.
Goat Simulator 3 is surprisingly a great-looking title, especially for one centered around a goat wrecking havoc. The lighting and color here are impressive with a wonderful use of detail to really set its locations apart. That said, there are only a few areas here that truly feel different and I think the game could have benefitted from the map being consisted of small little biomes to give more depth to its variety. That, and I want to snowboard as a goat, is that too much to ask?
Goat Simulator 3 was a nice surprise for me as I never experienced the first game. I had seen enough about the series to know what I was getting into, but the simplicity and silliness of this title really shine through. This is a game where you can take in the absolute chaos of seeing a lava goat, wearing a pink tutu, shooting fireworks off its back while wearing crocs, driving a car into a gas station, watching it explode in a hellish explosion, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Developer - Coffee Stain North. Publisher - Coffee Stain Publishing. Released - November 17th, 2022. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Microsoft Windows. Rated - (T) Crude Humor, Language, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Goat Simulator 3 was awarded to ASG as a gift through a Twitter Contest, no lie!
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.