So, the virally endorsed video of Goat Simulator – a parody of the latest trend of prosaic-sounding sim games that has exploded on YouTube over the last couple of weeks – is now becoming an actual game courtesy of Swedish developer Coffee Stain Studios, based on their prototype from which the video was sourced.
Described by Coffee Stain as “The next-gen goat simulation game you’ve always wanted to play” (Or at least, ‘the one you’ve always wanted to laugh at for the thirty seconds until the next goofy viral video blows up’), the game appears to play like the Insurance Fraud missions from Saints Row, but with a goat:
…Right.
I won’t lie, this is kind of irritating. Most people know by now that I’m a big booster for humour in games. I love Saints Row and Tim Schafer’s work, ate up the demo of The Stanley Parable and am dying to play the full version (And Jazzpunk, which by all accounts is wonderful) the first chance I get. I dug Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Jesus H. Trejo, even cracked a few chuckles Deadpool‘s way. But this, I don’t get. This looks like the worst of meme humour, a pre-baked injoke that misses its own point. The recent explosion of ‘mundanity sims’ is rife for parody, but coming up with a goofy physics game and slapping the word ‘simulator’ on it doesn’t qualify. You’d actually have to simulate being a goat, in all its grass-munching, occasionally-shitting idyllic glory. What we have here is Horny McGoatbollocks’s Property Damage Adventure, which could still be fun but isn’t as meme-friendly. True, an actual simulation of being a goat would be dull as all hell but… Isn’t… That… Kind of… The joke?
So far, so Snakes on a Plane. Personally, I’m just as happy throwing my Third Street Saints boss into traffic for bucks (Pun not intended). But maybe I’m selling Coffee Stain short and they’ll come up with a game that’s genuinely fun and engaging in it’s own right. I hope so, because as a concept it blows… Well… Pun intended. If you’re feeling brave, Goat Simulator can be pre-ordered here.
Anyway, why stop there? Next we could have GOTY Simulator, a social interactions game like Papers, Please in which we play a videogame dealing with the pressure of end-of-year lists. Or perhaps Goatee Simulator, which lets us play as the briefly stylish growth on a mid-Nineties alternative rock star’s face.
You thought I was going to say ‘Goatse Simulator’, weren’t you? Oh ye of little faith, dear reader! As if I’d stoop so low as to make goatse jokes.
Apart from that one.
Shit.