Back in early 2014, before Five Nights at Freddy’s took over the internet scene for the latter half of the year. There was Goat Simulator, a small “joke” game that slowly, over the course of a week, became the most talked about game in the internet zeitgeist. This allowed the floodgates of other “simulator” games to pop up into the gaming world, mainly on Steam. But when looking back at Goat Simulator without the rose-tinted glasses of how did this even get made, you begin to see a lot of issues that in other games would be a deal breaker. Broken physics, and a lack of a centralized goal, were the main issues pointed out by reviewers, but no one minded because the tone of the game was given off.

A true sandbox game that you can just mess around in and cause chaos, a sandbox design that started to evolve into a checklist game with the likes of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry coming out later that year. Now nearly a decade later, and Goat Simulator 3, you’re not having a stroke; the numbering is a joke, has come out into a new generation where bugs are treated with more scrutiny, and you need more than a fart-around simulator to make people happy. Which the game did address some of the issues, but it has major technical issues; however that didn’t bother my perspective of the game because this is the most fun I’ve had with a game all year.

Goat Simulator 3 biggest addition to the goat formula is the addition of a goal, level up your underground goat cult to the best level possible. It’s not much, but at least at the start, you have an idea of what the game is expecting from you. Once you receive this goal, after a humor test involving a dated and drawn-out Skyrim joke, you are released onto the larger world when compared to the original. In Goat Simulator 1, there were multiple maps, but each were separated, here they are all mushed together with nearly no loading screens; I say nearly because sometimes the game will freeze for a second to catch up, and given the amount of insanity you can do in this game I can understand. But with a main goal received, you can achieve this through whatever means you see fit, you can do the set list of missions given to you, or you can try to collect every single collectible trophy hidden throughout the map, or just go find all of the secrets which all involve some form of pop culture reference.

The humor in this game is hit and cringe; one moment, you can have an organic laugh at the sheer number of explosions happening on the screen and witnessing your goat body fly all over the place like a plastic bag in a tornado. But you can also have a drawn-out joke, like the previously mentioned Skyrim joke; I mean, the game takes five minutes to poke fun at PT, not saying anything about it, just pointing out how they can make a version of PT but really stupid. But then again, I am the type of person who likes this type of humor, similar to Kung Pow. So, if you are the type of person who doesn’t like DreamWorks type of humor, then I would recommend playing with the volume muted.

As for the gameplay, you are a goat, and the world is yours; the main enjoyment I had during my ten-plus hours to roll credits was just seeing how far they would push a joke and what the next shock joke was one example, I can give is you need to bring people to a church, and the church is a gym called “pump it up for Christ,” that got a really good laugh out of me just because of the absurdness of it. There are also a large number of cosmetics for you to discover, I mainly stopped looking when I got a hipster hat and a pair of fairy wings, but the amount of personalization on display and not locked behind a paywall is amazing.

But the gameplay does come with issues; the game was buggy during my time with it, and not just the on-purpose bugs that are Goat Simulator hallmarks, I mean bugs like the game freezing and at least three hard crashes on my Xbox. Hopefully, in due time these would be fixed, but it’s a double-edged sword with a game like this because, yes, I would like to have a more stable game, but if that means getting rid of the glitch that turned my goat into a piece of Laffy Taffy while being abducted by aliens, then I want it to stay.

The amount of fun you can have isn’t just limited to yourself; I had a chance to try online multiplayer for a bit, and bless its heart, it tried to keep a stable connection, but that wasn’t surprising given the sheer amount of mayhem happening all at once, but on the split screen side, it was more stable but not as stable when you are a lonely little goat.

But in the end, if you want a fun turn-your-brain-off checklist simulator, then Goat Simulator 3 is the deal for you this holiday, and since this came out with nearly no fanfare. The game is still trying to find its audience, but as an expanded version of the tiny joke game that went the distance all those years ago, it’s a great sequel that managed to take what worked and cranked it to eleven, and in this particular environment, that was exactly what people might look for.

Score: 7 out of 10

Reviewed on Xbox Series X