Goat Simulator Switch Review – Goatastrophe

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You Play as a Goat

If you’ve never heard of Goat Simulator, the game goes like this: you’re dropped in a massive city where you take control of a goat. You spend your days using the physics engine to mess with the environment and the NPCs that live in it. You can lick things to drag them along, baa at everything to make it explode, and even run up walls for added craziness.

Goat Simulator is one of those games that you either love or hate. Now that it made its way to the Nintendo Switch, how does the goat-tastic action hold up on a hybrid handheld console?

The GOATY Edition

The important thing to note about Goat Simulator on the Nintendo Switch is that it comes with all of the expansions for the game, including the extra sandbox map, the GOATZ expansion, Waste of Space expansion, Payday expansion, and GOAT MMO expansion. If you’re new to the game, then the GOATY Edition gives you everything in one fell swoop.

Each expansion takes the core concept and applies them in different settings. Waste of Space puts you on a spaceship while making fun of the dialogue options in Mass Effect. MMO simulator gives you silly quests that involve “baaing” at certain things and dragging things with your tongue. While there are small variations, each mode is just the base game with new maps to keep things interesting.

With that in mind, Goat Simulator should only be invested in if it’s the kind of game that you enjoy. It’s wacky and ridiculous, encouraging players to do all sorts of crazy things and stretching the mechanics to their very limits. While there’s a lot to mess with, there isn’t necessarily a lot to do, as the games let players run around to their own freedom. To make things more exciting, the game supports 2-player co-op so a friend can join in on the crazy action. Playing with someone else makes the game much more enjoyable, as it adds a new level of fun.

Something else Goat Simulator does to keep things interesting is add modifications. At any time, players can go through a menu of mods that changes how the goat moves or behaves. You can add a jetpack, give it the scream from Skyrim, or turn it into a demon. These mods add a new layer of experimentation to the game that make it fun to try out.

Make the Switch?

The biggest complaint I have with Goat Simulator on the Switch is honestly how it looks and runs. Goat Simulator was never an attractive game, but it always chugged along nicely on other consoles. The Nintendo Switch version, though, had to make a lot of sacrifices to get it running on a handheld. There are almost no shadows in the game, the models take a big hit, and the textures are significantly downgraded. It makes a subpar-looking game even uglier.

Making matters worse is that those sacrifices don’t lead to a consistent frame rate. Even in the menu screen, Goat Simulator struggles to keep its frame rate consistent. You can imagine how that translates into gameplay, where bigger actions make the game noticeably slow down. These problems are even more noticeable in handheld mode, which don’t make a portable version of the game more enticing over a standard console or PC version that maintains a better frame rate.

All in all, Goat Simulator is the kind of game where you know what you’re getting yourself into. If it’s something you’re really excited for and don’t have a copy, then a purchase on the Switch version might be worth it. If it’s something you’re not interested in, it won’t exactly win you over.

System reviewed on: Nintendo Switch.

Disclaimer: A review code for Goat Simulator was provided by the publisher.