Game Reviews

GoatZ

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GoatZ
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| GoatZ

You are a goat, and like all goats, your main imperative is to survive through eating.

I thought I'd get GoatZ's one and only concession to reality out of the way early doors.

For most of your time with this mash-up of Goat Simulator and PC survival game DayZ will be spent headbutting speedboats into the air, riding waterchutes, dragging cars around with your tongue, and blowing up zombies with jerry-rigged bombs.

Survival of the fattest

In truth, the debt to DayZ is little more than an affectionate nod. Yes, there's the constant twin threat of hunger and the zombie apocalypse eating away at your goat (sometimes literally); and yes, there's a rudimentary crafting element at play here.

But mainly GoatZ is all about running around a compact but dense open world arena, wreaking havoc and pulling off stunts by capitalising on the game engine's loose and scrappy hold on physics. As such, it's far more in keeping with the original Goat Simulator.

You still have randomly assigned goals to reach for bonus food and points, often involving killing a certain number of zombies with a specific weapon. These weapons must be assembled by collecting the necessary components dotted around the world and stashed away in airdrops.

Not enough ram?

Unfortunately, while this makes GoatZ as much silly fun as the original game, it also means that it has all of Goat Simulator's failings.

This game, like the first one, was scrappy and clunky in its original PC guise, and that was pretty much by design. With the added indignities of virtual controls and a heavily scaled-back graphics engine it's even more of a mess.

A frequently fun mess, sure, but a mess nonetheless. This is accompanied by a certain degree of instability. I noted several crashes across a period of less than an hour.

GoatZ, then, is essentially more Goat Simulator, but smaller and with a new layout and an end-of-the-world zombie apocalypse theme. That's either the biggest recommendation or the biggest warning I can give you.

GoatZ

A zombie-themed expansion of Goat Simulator's premise, meaning lots of manic action and cheap laughs built on technically dodgy foundations
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.