Goat Simulator

Coffee Stain Studios - 2014 - PC

I think there are pretty much two camps of people as it pertains to Goat Simulator. Those who think it's absolutely hilarious and those who get bored quickly while playing it and are slightly confused by the relative popularity of this game. I believe I fall in the latter camp. Just go watch some gameplay videos of Goat Simulator and you'll pretty much already know which camp you belong to without even having to play the game. I understand the humor though, and I get why people like the game. But the more I play Goat Simulator, the more I'm sure that I'm not this game's target audience.

Goat Simulator was a product of an internal game jam at Coffee Stain Studios. Some early footage of a demo of Goat Simulator was released on YouTube and the demand for a full game to be produced was very high. Because, you know, it's the internet. A full version of Goat Simulator was then launched on Steam earlier this year on April 1st. No really, it was. It's kind of an interesting game. It's maybe one of the truest sandbox games ever made. There's absolutely no objective. The entire gameplay of Goat Simulator relies on creating emergent humor through its admittedly broken physics engine. Have you ever been killed by a giant in Skyrim and seen this? Or seen the bizarre physics glitches in the FIFA or GTA games? The developers intentionally left these kinds of glitches in the Goat Simulator physics engine for comedic effect. And that's pretty much the game, just messing around with the physics engine in the game world. There is a scoring system similar to ones found in the old Tony Hawk skating games where points are awarded for doing various skating tricks. There's also some mini-missions and subquests, but it's pretty much just Messing Around: The Videogame

The aforementioned physics glitches in the Elder Scrolls, FIFA or GTA games are funny because they are unexpected and bizarre variations on our expectations of how the game should behave. In all of those games, there is (arguably) some semblance of realism or at least the attempt to make physics objects behave as they would in the real world. That's not really the case with Goat Simulator. I feel that the intentionally programmed physics bugs in Goat Simulator lose some of their comedic value because, while they still look ridiculous, they are completely expected by the player. You're not really expecting to headbutt a human NPC and have him just fall over. You expecting him to skyrocket unrealistically off into the horizon. And always having this constant expectation of humor somewhat diminished the comedic impact for me. I was almost disappointed when crazy stuff didn't always constantly happen while I was galavanting around in the game world. 

Summary:

If you're looking for an open ended, goofy sandbox game with ludicrous physics, Goat Simulator is your game. I didn't really enjoy it, but I'm also aware that this kind of game is not for me. It's obviously loved by its fans though, as it has tons of gameplay videos of ridiculous stuff on YouTube. I think a recent patch for the game added a couch co-op mode, which is cool. This is definitely the kind of game you'd want to share with friends.

Gone Home

The Fullbright Company - 2013 - PC

The pitch for Gone Home is that you’re a college aged kid coming home from a long study abroad trip. It’s the early 90s, before cell phones or the internet, so your only recent communication with your family has been mainly letters and postcards. When you arrive home, your house is empty and your family is missing, so you have to explore the house for clues as to where they may be. When I heard this pitch, I was super excited to play the game because it sounded narrative focused, which I always like, and it was also interesting to me to design a game purely around the mechanic of searching a house. Unfortunately, I was a bit dissapointed in the execution of this mechanic after playing the game.

My main disappointment with this game is that, every time you find a clue as to where your family is, the game starts a voice over clip and spells out to you exactly what the game wants you to know after discovering the clue. I think it would have been way more powerful to let the player examine each object and determine for themselves whether the object is relevant to the story and let the player construct the narrative for themselves. I think it would give a sense of discovery and accomplishment that isn't really present in the game as it stands now. You kind of click through each object in each room until you find one that triggers an audio clip, and then just repeat the process for each room. The developers could have still saved the audio clips for the end of the game for a bigger impact. Right now, when the player reaches the end of the game, it just kind of ends unceremoniously and awkwardly.

It’s a bit difficult to talk about this game without spoiling anything, but people who have already played this game should know what I mean. I’m a bit torn on Gone Home because I recognize that it’s a very important and progressive game, but at the same time I feel that there are a lot of execution flaws with this game. Gone Home is starting to get a lot of attention and win some awards, which is all good, but I feel like some of the love this game is getting has to do with the subject matter in the game and not necessarily the game itself. Again, people who have already played this game will know what I mean.

The writing in the game is mostly solid for a video game, but that unfortunately doesn't say much. But there were a few gripes I had with the storytelling. It’s probably pretty hard to write solid and well defined characters around the mechanic of discovering objects in a house, but I found that I never got a really good sense of the player’s parent’s characters. They felt flat and undeveloped. Maybe this was on purpose, but I think it would have helped the overall narrative to flesh out these characters a bit more.

Summary:
As negative as I sound about this game, I would still recommend this to people who like narrative focused games. Just be aware that it’s very short; I finished it in one sitting. It’s also a very personal and intimate game from a storytelling point of view, so don’t expect something light or humorous or action packed. Your enjoyment of this game will probably depend on how much this game “works” for you. I don’t think this game really “worked” for me, but I really hope more games like Gone Home get made soon, if that makes any sense

Grand Theft Auto V

Rockstar North - 2013 - PS3/X360

Just from a sheer technological standpoint, I found this game quite impressive. To have an open world as large as GTA V did and with the amount of detail in the environments that this game had is pretty mind blowing. You can wander out in the middle of nowhere and look around and the environments will appear just as detailed and vibrant as they do in the heavy traffic city areas. Add on top of that the complex physics simulations and game systems, realistic character animations and large open world and this is probably the most technically impressive video game I've ever played. Especially when you consider that the game is running on 8 year old hardware.

Gameplay wise, it’s pretty much your standard GTA game. Drive around, blow stuff and cause chaos. What’s different about GTA V is that you can switch between one of three characters at nearly any time. The characters all have different personalities and missions as well as stats and abilities. One of the characters can do bullet time driving while one of the other characters can do bullet time…bullets.

The characters in GTA V all have distinct personalities and are incredibly well defined and well written. Especially when compared to other GTA games where I found all of the characters to be more or less forgettable. While I found the characters to be well written, I found a lot of the parts of the overall story to be hit and miss. Mostly miss. There were a lot of the parts of the story where the characters had no conceivable motivation to be doing what they were doing. Because the characters were so well written and defined, they sometimes felt out of place in story situations that were over the top. There’s a part in the story where one of the characters meets a total random stranger, flies up in a plane with him, rides an ATV out of the back of the plane and opens the parachute at the last possible second just for fun. Okay, but why? Why would my character decide to do this? Maybe I’m not supposed to take the story as seriously as I did, but the game seems to want me to. At least sometimes. GTA V seems to randomly decide to take the story quite seriously whenever it wants to and the tone oscillates between serious and ridiculous which is kind of jarring. The game will have you jumping ATVs out of planes one second, but then want you to care about these characters and their well being the next. Which didn't quite work for me.

But the fun of a GTA game is driving around and causing chaos, which this game does as well or better than any other GTA title. The missions were fun, no driving people around and having to call and chat with them constantly like GTA IV. There were only a small handful of missions in GTA V that I found to be boring or tedious. And there’s a frequent checkpointing system in the game so you’ll rarely need to replay a certain section of the mission over and over again if you fail. I've pretty much ignored the online portion of this game. I don’t know why, it just doesn't appeal to me.

Summary:
Overall, I found GTA V to be a pretty solid game, it’s my favorite in the series and I doubt fans of other GTA games will be dissapointed.

Guacamelee!

Drinkbox Studios - 2013 - PS3/Vita/PC

Guacamelee! is a Mexican-themed beat em’ up platformer with puzzle solving elements and a very silly sense of humor. I don’t usually dig beat em’ up games, but I’m glad checked this game out, it’s pretty awesome. You play as Juan Aguacate, a Mexican farmer who dons a magical luchador mask to become a superpowered wrestler in order to save his kidnapped girlfriend.

The game can be played solo or co-op, a second player can assume the role of the female wrestler “Tostada”. I played through the game both solo and co-op. The co-op makes the platforming sections a bit more frantic, but makes the beat em’ up sections and boss fights quite a bit easier.

The game has some Metroidvania elements as well: as you progress through the game and unlock new wrestling moves, you’ll gain access to areas you previously unable to reach. As mentioned before, Guacamelee! also has a very silly sense of humor. It’s chock full of “nerd jokes”, internet humor and direct references to other video games. It was kind of a fun “can you spot them all?” subgame within Guacamelee!; trying to catch some of the more subtle video game references. There was even a Zelda II reference in there! How many people are really going to get that one?

Summary:
Guacamelee! is a bit on the short side, but it’s quite good. Check it out.