Octodad: Dadliest Catch - Full Review (PC/Mac/Linux and PS4 game)

It doesn’t take much to appreciate that this is an exceptionally unusual game, though in all the right ways. 'Octodad: Dadliest Catch' puts you in control of an octopus who is pretending to be a regular, ordinary human citizen. Already I’m sure you can see just how much potential this game has. 'Octodad: Dadliest Catch' exists as a revamp of the freeware student game, ‘Octodad’ that you can download here, with many locations being identical only now in a much higher quality.

Developer: Young Horses Inc
Genre: Adventure
Release date: January 30th 2014
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux and the Playstation 4.
ESRB: E - Everyone

Story and gameplay

Octodad is a father to two children, somehow, and husband to a wife who’s beginning to suspect that something’s amiss with her burbling, sagging husband. Now, the problem about being an octopus on land is fairly apparent, apart from the whole breathing thing; you have eight legs, none of which have bones in them. Stuffing your tentacles into a pair of trousers and trying to parade around upright is just half the battle, the real problem comes with actually trying to manoeuvre around the place. Cursed with suckers that stick to everything they come in contact with and the need to coordinate yourself whilst not appearing unusual to people is incredibly awkward. Due to this, the game plays similar to other ragdoll physics games like ‘Qwop’ or the excellent ‘Surgeon Simulator’ series only in a more adventure game setting. 

 

It’s difficult not to laugh as you try and guide Octodad through one area and into another, desperately trying to remain undercover as a sentient sea creature whilst also trying to complete your domestic duties. Suddenly, simple tasks like turning off an alarm clock, shopping in the mall or taking your kids to an aquarium become something akin to gentle torture as you attempt to flail each individual limb in a vaguely appropriate manner. Each leg is controlled individually and you can switch control from your legs to your arms at the press of a button; you cannot control both at the same time. When you go to grab something you can move your tentacle arm in almost every single direction which makes aiming quite difficult although, helpfully, objects you are targeting acquire a subtle green glow so you know what you’re about to pick up. With this bizarre premise in mind you should now prepare yourself for what turns out to be a very entertaining but frustrating game as you frolic through ten levels and six different environments.

As if things weren’t hard enough already, a meter at the bottom of the screen indicates how much attention you’re drawing to yourself. Octodad gets nervous whenever he’s aware that he’s bumping into things, dropping things, flailing tentacles in people’s faces and climbing up and over children without meaning to. As his anxiety level rises Octodad produces ink that splurts everywhere and rapidly increases the detection meter, when the meter is full then it means he has been discovered and you must restart the level. It’s fair to say the game is by no means difficult, but there are areas that will trip you up because you can be instantly detected if you are seen just once. Due to this a large portion of the game is dedicated to stealth especially when it comes to pesky ‘Marine Biologists’ who know an octopus when they see one, which is fair enough I guess. Luckily these moments tend to come later on in the game when you’ve got a very good grasp of the controls and are able to do more ‘complex’ moves like actually walking in a straight line without tripping over yourself. 

The game has a small amount of re-playability after completing what turns out to be a fairly short main storyline, it won’t take you much longer than 4 or 5 hours, as it introduces collectible items, freeplay mode and local co-op play. In each individual level there are 3 collectible ties to find, usually pinned in hard to reach locations or hidden somewhere in the environment, by collecting all 3 of any given level you unlock a tie that Octodad can wear. Freeplay mode allows you to revisit any of the locations in the game and pick up any ties you missed or just mess about if you bombed through the storyline too quickly. The co-op play is particularly interesting and introduces something akin to a three-legged race as each player controls an individual limb with support for up to four players. This in itself is pretty funny but to make things even more haphazard you can enable ‘roulette mode’ where, each time an objective is completed, the limb or set of limbs you are in control of changes to something else entirely. There’s no indication of what you’ll be controlling and it is completely random so whilst a moment ago you were controlling the left leg, now you’re controlling the right arm. It seem as though the co-op in this game is designed to be as frustrating as possible and if you aren’t shouting orders, eye-rolling and cursing then collapsing into laughter then you’re not doing it right. Perfect co-ordination between you and your friends would be pretty boring and despite the arguments it’s a brilliant co-op game, requiring real teamwork and communication that’s oddly quite a rarity in multiplayer games.

Graphics and environments

Whilst there are not many levels in the base game, with many of them being variations of the same ‘theme’ the ones which are original from one another are fantastic. Each level is very well designed and with plenty of little Easter Eggs and references to indie games like ‘Minecraft’ and ‘Super MeatBoy’ which are a nice touch for gamers to appreciate. Whilst some may describe the graphics as simplistic and nothing particularly noteworthy I instead found them to be perfect for the tone and overall feel of the game. Cartoony, fun, vibrant and beautifully shaded the game is not so much about next-gen graphics and is more about bringing an aged student indie game into the modern era. Quite often there are some mechanical issues like getting stuck on the environment and very minimal clipping but it happened rarely and mostly occurred because of the complexity of Octodad’s limbs and your ability to move them in any which direction. With the additional levels, available for free for all platforms, my disappointment at how soon the game ended was quickly wiped away and instead replaced with an eager anticipation to play some more. 

Music and audio

First things first; the custom made theme song that is sung during this game is both tragic and hilarious. It’s so bad that it’s good and, in all fairness, it’s just there for a bit of fun. When I first realized that the deep male singer, Ian McKinney, was singing lyrics like ‘Octodaaaddd… Nobody suspects a thing, OCTODAAAAAD’ I almost died. I’m not totally surprised that the song is becoming something of a cult hit on the internet but, this aside, the general music and audio of the game is good. The voice acting, Octodad included, is brilliant and some of the things the children say are brilliant. There’s a great deal of wit in the dialogue and I found that the voice actors really rose to the occasion with plenty of personality and humour. Nothing is left out and nothing sounds particularly odd, as is often the case where you can manipulate objects. Unfortunately there can be a fair bit of repetitiveness in what the characters say, though only when you’re standing idle in one area for a long time. Often, particularly in the stealth levels, you’ll be forced to repeat an area over and over and it is here that the limited set of lines the characters will say becomes apparent, which is a great shame. 

Performance

When me and my partner played this I’ve got to say the only times we stopped laughing were when the game lagged out tremendously in a couple of specific areas. This led to a very frustrating hour of trying to play with an extremely low frame rate and the seemingly impossible goal of scaling a huge children’s playground. The lag returned for a couple of other levels as well, both of which required very accurate timing and movement, on the bright side this is an acknowledged problem and will likely be patched for all PC users. 

Overall

The great thing about this game is its potential to go really far as there is a huge amount of storyline that could be easily added along with levels and objectives. 'Octodad: Dadliest Catch' is a huge improvement on the original game and it’s a great way to spend an afternoon or two as it’s such a friendly and engaging game and very easy to get into. The humour is priceless, the objectives varied and the storyline endearing. Whilst I don’t usually play ragdoll physics games I found this one to be irresistible and apart from its teething issues its great fun and with a fair bit of re-playability due to the collectible ties found within each location and, of course, the freeplay mode where you can revisit all the levels. With the upcoming DLC the developers appear to also be aware of how much further this game can be taken and, whilst some may find that the gameplay loses its novelty, I personally cannot wait. 

The Good:

• Free DLC adds additional levels.
• Best theme song of the year.
• Great co-op play.
• Innovative, funny gameplay.
• Good storyline with great potential for more.
• Variety of objectives keeps things fresh.
• Nice, detailed environments.

The Bad:

• Some lag in certain areas.
• Occasional clipping. 
• Short length. 
• Too much stealth.

The Score: 8/10 

Last thoughts: "I cannot wait for the DLC! This game ended far too soon for my liking.It's a shame about all the lag as my system should have had no trouble with this game." 

Theme Hospital - Full Review (PC and PS1 game)

Theme Hospital is a comical and witty game that is quite arguably one of the best simulation games of all time and most certainly the best hospital simulator ever created. A successor to the deeply enjoyable ‘Theme Park’, Theme Hospital takes the boring job of hospital management and turns it into something incredibly addictive and with bucket loads of playability.

Developer: Bullfrog Productions (PC) and Krisalis Software (PS)
Genre: Hospital management
Release date: February 4, 1997 (PC), February 1998 (PS1)
Platforms: PS1 and PC (MS-DOS and Windows)
ESRB: E - Everyone

The game was released for the PC and PlayStation 1 though aside from some minor differences like graphical quality and no background music for the PS1 version they are exactly the same game. You’ll play across twelve different hospitals with the task of designing and managing them to success whilst fending off patients with all sorts of strange illnesses and complaints. Theme Hospital is by no means a serious game and in fact it’s a highly original game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. To get you started, here’s the intro to the game.

 

Gameplay and game content

There are twelve hospitals that you will take charge of where you are given nothing but an empty floor plan and the money to start building rooms and hiring staff. You’re given a short amount of time to build the basics of your hospital such as a reception desk and diagnosis rooms like a GPs office and a hospital ward before the time runs out, the hospital opens and patients start visiting. The staff you need to hire consist of doctors, nurses, caretakers and one or two receptionists all of whom will have a short bio such as ‘heckles poor comedians, smells faintly of cabbage, possible liability’ along with their level of skill represented by a green bar. Doctors can have specializations and as you progress through the game you’ll need additional rooms and the doctors with the skill to work in those rooms such as surgeons, researchers and psychiatrists. Consultant doctors can also train their junior counterparts to have their specializations as well as increasing their overall level of skill. Depending on how good they are, their personality and the quality of their room including its size and contents staff may move faster or slower and perform worse and better than their colleagues. 

The game starts out simple and you won’t need many different clinics or rooms as the patients that will be visiting you will only have one of a handful of illnesses though it’s when the patients start showing up that you notice the humour of the game. ‘King Complex’ patients dressed as Elvis are in desperate need of a psychiatrist, patients ailing from ‘The Squits’ from eating pizza found under the oven are sent hurrying over to the pharmacy whilst patients with elongated tongues drooping comically from their mouths are pointed in the direction of a Slack Tongue Clinic; a glorified guillotine crossed with a clothes press. Each new condition or illness you encounter will pop up at the bottom of the screen, along with any other alerts, containing a description of the cause of the illness, the symptoms and the cure and these fact sheets always make me genuinely laugh. The conditions get more and more ludicrous and obscure as time goes by and soon you’ll have patients suffering from hair all over their bodies, radiating a garish and toxic looking green glow and aliens who were once humans and who need a trip to the ‘DNA converter’. 

Your success in this game largely depends a lot on how well you can design your hospital and micro-manage your staff as in later levels you will be absolutely flooded with patients who all require immediate attention. At first the game is quite simplistic and to win the level you simply need to meet certain criteria including number of patients cured, the overall worth of the hospital, a certain bank balance, reputation of the hospital and having to treat a variable percentage of the number of visitors to your hospital. You’ll frequently encounter ‘emergencies’ where a lot of patients with the same condition will all be flown via a helicopter to your hospital and if you don’t cure them by the time the time limit runs out, they all die. This can be fairly simple to manage if it’s something like a quick visit to a pharmacy but when you’ve got eight or nine patients all requiring major surgery you’re going to have a tough time squeezing them all in before their time runs out. Then there’s epidemics to contend with where you can either admit your hospital is infected, pay a fine and take a reputation hit or try to cover it up and cure them all before anybody discovers what’s happened. If you manage to cure them all and cover up the epidemic you’ll get a comfortable compensation bonus for the ‘wrongful’ accusations. There’s always this underlying sense that the hospitals you’re running aren’t exactly trustworthy as there are many unusual methods at dealing with patients and, even more disturbing, an ‘auto-autopsy’ machine in the research department where you can send patients whose condition you don’t understand due to lack of research. The thing is, once the patient is slid into the machine, CAT scan style, don’t ever seem to come back out again, hmm… 

For every new level there’s new challenges and new problems to deal with from earthquakes to vomit waves and the constant changing up of what’s going on in the hospital adds for some really interesting gameplay. A problem with the game is the unpredictable AI of your staff who sometimes struggle to go where they’re supposed to be going, leaving handymen ignoring overflowing bins and puddles of vomit and doctors wandering the corridors whilst a queue of sick patients stacks up outside the GPs office. You really do need to keep an eye on everybody at all times by dragging your doctors, nurses and handymen to where they need to be. Fail to keep on top of things and alongside a dirty hospital you’ll have your patients deteriorating health to worry about. A face above each patient’s head as they get more and more unhappy gradually deteriorates into a ghastly skull which means they’re about to drop dead on the hospital floor only to then float to heaven or be ushered into Hell by Mr Death himself. Thankfully the AI is not always frustrating and usually staff will be on their way to where they’re needed before the announcement woman calls out that a doctor or nurse is required in whichever room. 

Your ability to manage your hospital is fine-tuned to the smallest details and you can place everything where you want to be including radiators, plants, drinks machines and benches in the corridors as well as items and machinary in the hospital rooms themselves such as the desks, bookcases and bins. You can manage your bank account by taking out a loan, paying interest of course, and even decide how much to spend on the heating of your hospital and whether or not to give your staff a raise or a monetary bonus. Not only this, you can decide how much patients pay for each treatment or diagnosis attempt such as a stay in the hospital ward or a visit to the ‘Hair Restoration’ clinic. Despite this fine-tuned managing of the books everything is very simple to use and easy to understand and it won’t take much clicking around and reading of the in-game material to figure out how to do everything. As one of those people who doesn’t like reading a whole load of facts, figures and percentages I tend to bypass the many charts in the game and still can get through it quite happily. 

Graphics and audio

Graphically the PC edition of this game is superior to the PlayStation 1 port but that’s not to say either game looks bad. The screenshots used here are from the PC version but below you can see a screenshot of the PS1 edition, just for comparison's sake. Overall the graphics are really quite decent and very clear cut. Everything is colourful, very well detailed and a bit quirky with its own sense of identity in the whole design of the game. It’s a huge step up from the slightly blurry, fuzzy graphical appearance of ‘Theme Park’ and for a 90s game it really is impressive. The voice acting mostly consisting of a female announcement voice which is both funny and good quality as she apologizes to the patients about the amount of litter and chides ‘mad patients’ for being too loud in the corridors. Staff and patients don’t ever talk and tend to communicate with you through alerts at the bottom of the screen and symbols above their head, for example if they’re confused or if they’ve just discovered a new illness or researched/improved a new piece of equipment. Everything is very clearly communicated to you via the graphics however and the camera is very flexible and not at all awkward to use.

For the PC version the music is fantastic; nostalgic and catchy it has upbeat tunes that change track as you play the game so it doesn’t become irritating after a long period of time. Whenever a patient is cured you’ll hear a cheer from an unseen crowd and boo’ing when a patient dies, leaves the hospital or is sent home which adds to the light-hearted and interactive feel of the whole game. 

Overall

This is one of my childhood games that is still so addictive, challenging and fun to play now and, even after completing it, there’s still great satisfaction in starting all over again and pouring hours upon hours of my time into it. It’s just the right level of challenging and even if you find it too easy there’s three levels of difficulty so you can always crank it up a notch and struggle with the demands of the hardest ‘Consultant’ difficulty level. I love the humour in this game and it’s not an overpowering attempt to be funny, it’s just witty here and there from the diseases, to the announcements to the weird things you find becoming commonplace like excessively decorated staff rooms and questionable healthcare practices. The customization options are brilliant, it looks and sounds fantastic and overall it’s just so playable and so memorable that I can’t help but rank this as one of my favourite PC games.

The Good:

• Witty, intelligent humour that also borders on the silly
• Hours upon hours of gameplay
• Addictive, almost worryingly fun
• Nice level of difficulty and can be very challenging
• Lots of different rooms and illnesses keeps things interesting
• Very defined appearance makes it instantly recognizeable
• Memorable music that's really upbeat and not at all annoying

The Bad:

• Patients are always freezing.
• Staff AI can be a little dodgy
• More hospitals would have been good, but only because I want to continue playing

The Score: 9/10 

Last thoughts: "So addictive, even now in 2014 this is so much fun to play and is one of the few micro-management games I play religiously."
Note: If you’re interested I have a list of cheats and codes that will allow you to do extra things like play whichever level you want to play, for both PS1 and PC editions, and some extra bits for the PC edition such as unlocking all research and getting extra money. You can find my cheat guide here.

Playing Theme Hospital on new OS systems:

The PlayStation 1 version of the game is very easily obtained on sites such as Ebay and Amazon but the PC version will give you more trouble on newer systems, that said, it’s not impossible. By using an emulator such as DOSbox you can happily play the game as intended or, alternatively, you can use an open source ‘clone of the game called CorsixTH. This clone still requires you to purchase the original disk but it allows you to play the game on OS’s such as Vista and Windows 7. You can download CorsixTH here. 

South Park: The Stick of Truth - Full Review (PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 game)

The crude, provocative satire of South Park has been changing the shape of animated adult entertainment since the late 90s and now, it’s changing the shape of RPG video games. If you’re unfamiliar with South Park then a lot of the content of The Stick of Truth will likely be lost on you as this is a game of nostalgia; revisiting the best jokes and moments from the TV series but that’s not to say you won’t enjoy it. For newcomers, ‘South Park: The Stick of Truth’ is a healthy introduction into the surreal and exaggerated world of South Park and is a great lesson in just how far their famously unsettling humour can venture. 

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment/South Park Digital Studios

Genre: RPG
Release date: March 4th 2014
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows
ESRB: M - Mature
Despite it’s comical, innocuous cut out paper style appearance South Park has always been something aimed at a mature audience and it’s refreshing to see that the Stick of Truth has pulled no punches (except for the Europe edition of the game) in delivering shocking scenes but vastly enjoyable gameplay. This is the game that South Park fans have been waiting for and not only does it stay true to its roots but it stands as an innovative, enjoyable and brilliantly funny game in and of its own rights. Welcome to Colorado.

Gameplay and plot

South Park: The Stick of Truth is quite recognizably an RPG game with character classes, turn based combat and plenty of quests and side quests to complete. You start by creating your character where you can choose your outfit, skin colour, hair and accessories like freckles or glasses. The customizability options here are pleasantly varied so I had no trouble getting my perfect looking ‘new kid’ in order. There is no option for a female character, though you can put them in ponytails and buns if you want to, though this is probably down to the male dominated friendship group you’ll be spending time with. Later on in the game you can change your character’s appearance by finding wigs, dyes and accessories which is useful if you change your mind later on. 
 

You play a new kid who has just arrived in South Park with your parents. There’s some indication that you’re an extremely special, ‘chosen’ child who has forgotten what their special power or nature is. You don’t ever actually talk but you’re quickly initiated into a make-believe game by Butters, Cartman and Kenny which vaguely involves a ‘humans versus elves ‘type scenario that parody’s a variety of cultural bits and pieces like Game of Thrones, Skyrim and Lord of the Rings. In a typical South Park fashion the plotline then spirals completely out of control and falls into a deep, dark hole of surreal adventuring and government conspiracies. The game isn’t very long and is around about 20 hours of gameplay if you do all the side quests and take care to grab collectibles and search each area thoroughly. I imagine if you just went through the main storyline as quickly as possible you’d be very disappointed in how quickly it was over.

Gameplay consists of a liberal mix of fighting and exploring and, if you don’t want to continue the main quest straight away, you can just mill around the world and see what’s going on. You can pick up side quests by talking to characters, collect ‘Chinpokemon’ toys that are hidden throughout the game and smash bits of scenery to reveal bags of loot. By looking for containers with gold handles you can also enjoy the many, many in-jokes about things found in episodes like the ‘Shake Weight’ in Stan’s parents room and the ‘Boy sized leash’ found in the back of the church. Most of this stuff is junk, and there’s plenty of it in-game, which you can sell for money meaning you’re never short of cash to buy all the new equipment, items and ‘strap-ons’ that the game has. The shops don’t generate any new equipment however so you’ll mostly get new equipment by carefully searching areas.

The map area of the game is fairly large and almost everywhere is explorable. Some buildings do require keys that can be found by questing, progressing through the storyline or by searching through people’s drawers to find say, the key to the garage. To make travel easier there’s a variation of a fast travel service (Timmy with a trailer hooked to the back of his wheelchair) that is restricted to 12 locations and which can only be used if you’re at one of the flags at these locations. The menu system is based as though you’re on the internet and there’s an odd Facebook friends system where you make friends by finding and talking to people or completing quests for them. There’s then a Facebook style messaging bar where they’ll post up status updates for you to read. The menu is where you’ll find your journal and party members who can be changed depending on what point you’re at in the story.

The environments are surprisingly puzzle based if you’re looking to explore everywhere and you can interact quite readily with things around you. As you progress through the storyline you gain access to abilities that will help you get to special areas but you’re initially restricted to a bow and unlimited arrows that you can use to hit gleaming objects in the environment, which makes stuff happen. Quite often you do this to open up a pathway or to kill an enemy before engaging it in the standard turn based combat you’ll grow familiar with. This is a handy feature and requires some degree of thought as potential traps in the environment are not always apparent and can be passed over if you’re not looking carefully. Merely hitting an enemy with an arrow will not kill them and will instead stun them. If you then chose to engage them you’d have them stunned at the beginning but only temporarily so. Environmental traps will kill them outright and tends to include doing things like bursting a water pipe then breaking an electrical wire or setting something on fire and then igniting it using magic which is a crude take on Dragon Shouts from Bethesda’s Skyrim. 

The regular turn based combat in this game is incredibly well done and has been decked out with enough features to not make the turn based fighting style boring. To begin with, your class dictates a number of special abilities you can unlock as you gain levels and experience which gives enough diversity to the classes to make your initial decision matter. These abilities often put a de-buff on the enemy such as gross out, where they throw up, bleeding which makes them… bleed, and burning which sets them on fire. These de-buffs last a few turns and can stack up meaning for each turn the inflicted enemy will lose health until the de-buff wears off. These effects have very visual indicators such as a puddle of blood around their feet and, since they can also be applied to you, this is especially helpful for new players as it makes everything very apparent. Unfortunately by the time I had reached the end of the game I was sick of just how much focus has been placed on combat. By that point I’d reached the maximum level, a mere level 15, and battles had become extremely simple and repetitive since only a couple of combination of attacks were truly effective.

You also have perks which you unlock by making lots of Facebook friends. Perks are passive abilities that do things like increase your health or give you additional damage to bleeding targets. Combat consists of a ranged weapon, melee weapon, special class based abilities and magic abilities and uses a form of quick time event which punishes the overzealous or distracted player since damage is severely reduced if you’re too fast or too slow. Enemies can also take stances like ‘deflect’ to hit back range attacks at you, ‘riposte’ to negate your melee attacks or ‘channelling’ which means they’re charging up a very powerful attack that needs to be interrupted. All weapons and armour can be changed at any time outside of combat and further enhanced using strap-ons that are either bought or found. Strap-ons are a type of augmentation that you put in slots on your weapons and armour which apply additional effects like shock damage, health regeneration or stronger melee attacks. These simple additions I’ve mentioned make combat much more interesting than just hitting, waiting your turn, and hitting again as it means you have to apply some tactical grace to your battles. It’s also great fun to attach a dead rat to the end of your weapon and smack people with it, making them throw up for a few turns and stopping them from healing because they can’t stand the sight of food.

Graphics and audio

If anybody looked in on you playing this game they would surely think it was a new episode of South Park as the sound and appearance is utterly flawless. To an outsider it may look like a crude, half assed attempt at an animation as the iconic ‘paper cut out’ style of the characters remains, but that’s beside the point. Each area, character and object is identical to its predecessor, perfectly detailed, vibrantly coloured and beautifully shaded. Truly, this game is a seamless replica of the latest version of South Park and boasts flawless voice acting due to the presence of the show’s original actors. The audio is partly what makes this game so brilliant as there’s no strained attempts at recreating Cartman’s ‘maaamm’ whine or Jimmy’s relentless stuttering. Not only did the original actors from the show lend the game their voices but all of South Park’s audio resources like music and sound effects have been fitted in too. It’s clear that Parker and Stone really wanted this game to happen, compared to previous South Park games, as they had a direct hand in shaping every aspect of the Stick of Truth from armour designs to writing the game script. All in all, the game looks and sounds exactly as it should be and every asset from the show has been liberally used to make this game instantly recognizable and it really does feel like a continuation of the show.

Overall

I was surprised that this game was not only a great representation of South Park but also a fun and challenging RPG game. The storyline was incredibly short and after about 20 hours of play everything was starting to feel a little tame and cheesy so it was probably good it ended when it did. The combat in the game makes up a huge percentage of what you’ll be doing though it does remains continually challenging and interesting until you’re at the game’s end. Luckily, there’s no real need to grind your way up levels like a lot of RPGs so combat is mostly restricted to quests and the occasional encounter and you’ll reach the level cap quite naturally. I found the world environment to be a perfect replica of the show and the strong support from Parker and Stone really does set this game apart from its previous counterparts. There are so many great, memorable and hilarious features in this game that will keep you amused for hours as you travel from the quiet little mountain town, to the fantastically designed Canada and every weird place in between. If you love South Park then you won’t be disappointed in this game and if you’ve never watched South Park then you can still enjoy it as an introduction into their strange and disturbing world. I highly rate this and recommend this game to everybody but for the love of God, please be over 18 and beware of highly offensive content on all topics.

The Good:

• Looks fantastic
• Huge scope of environments
• Downright hilarious/offensive
• Fairly interesting combat
• World interactions are substantial
• Lots of collectibles
• Great interfaces
• Decent storyline
• Lots of side quests

The Bad:

• A little too short
• Combat can become repetative
• Europe version is censored
• Unable to play as female

The Score: 8/10

Final thoughts: "I do love South Park but this is really just a game for those that like crude humour and the series itself. Apart from that, it's a fairly average RPG." 

Goat Simulator - Quick Review (PC game)

Before I begin, let me ask you a question; have you ever wanted to know what it's like to be a goat? Of course you have, everybody has, so you'll be pleased to know that this game is a goat simulator; simulating the everyday life of a goat. But not just any goat, this goat is a super speedy, super destructive, super 'what the actual hell is going o- OHMYGOD' goat. 

I think it's tongue is coming out of its nose, is that normal for goats?

Goat simulator is by no means a serious game so for those of you hoping to be munching grass and scratching your ears I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. This goat simulator is designed to play as an extremely broken, surreal and glitchy game and you'll very quickly notice the intensely rag doll animations and overtly exaggerated gameplay. In this game you can bounce off trampolines and air vents, perform flips and tricks, glitch your way to the top of a construction site, ram your head through supposedly solid objects and lick passing humans with an ultra sticky tongue, allowing you to drag them around like deflated jellyfish.

The unfortunate reality of owning your own trampoline.

The game has numerous areas where the core aim is to rack up as many points as possible by destroying as much as possible. The goat has rag doll like physics meaning you can send him flying in every which direction with not much adherence to little things like gravity or bones. If anything it’s pretty similar to an old Tony Hawk game as, whilst catapulting through the air, you can perform tricks to earn even more points.  The best way of getting points though is by destroying things and almost everything can be demolished with your furry hide. Is there a point to this game? Not really, it's very much a sandbox game and it's designed purely to maximize fun without any real objectives or constraints. The game plays like a sandbox game because you can basically do anything and go anywhere you want, no matter what the obstacle. Want to push people into the road so they get hit by trucks? Go ahead, climb up onto roofs then flip off them onto trampolines to string together a series of goat-style combo moves? Why the hell not. The freedom is really refreshing and I just love a game without boundries even if you have to suffer with extreme glitchy-ness to experience it.

Go wherever you want and pass out from sheer enjoyment.

In case you’re looking for meaning in this game there’s a lot of hidden collectibles dotted about throughout the levels which add a bit more depth to the game and which encourages you to explore all the areas. There are 'quests' though this is far from resembling any form of actual RPG game and also achievements for doing particularly impressive things. There’s something crazy awesome about finding a mask that summons up demons to help you in your destructive conquest. The only real drawbacks of the game has to be how glitchy and broken it is; though they may be partly the point as a lot of glitches can be exploited to make everything even more unbelievably funny. The graphics are fairly realistic and a cross between the latest Sims and an older GTA game with great urban environments nestled in amongst the farmyard ones. The animations are coupled with tinkling fairground type music that adds a whole new level of surreal to this quirky, senseless game.

Everything the light touches, you can go to. And also the shadowed bits. Generally it's open world.

Overall, I’d say this game is well worth the modest price they’re asking for as it’s a great laugh to motor around in a goat that feels more like a skateboard. You’ll get plenty of laughs out of this one and I’m pretty sure this is going to become a staple of Let’s Plays everywhere as it’s not only awesome but memorable too. If you're still not convinced, check out the trailer below, I'm sure this'll answer any lasting reservations you may have.

Score: 7/10

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