Untitled Goose Game

Honk! 

I was tempted to leave it there as that one noise sums up 90% of what makes Goose Game fun and this is what this style of game should be. Having some mindless, crazy fun and that’s exactly what you do when you take on the role of Goose.

 

So there’s some kind of weird storyline where you are in your home, as a goose, and start the game by Pressing X to Honk. That’s all the X button does but it can he used to great effect throughout the game. The goal of the game is to annoy as many people as possible starting with the gardener. Such annoying things include stealing his keys and hat and taking his keys and throwing them in the lake, all the while honking, spreading your wings and being generally cool. There is something oddly charming about being an asshole goose, it’s weird.

 
Gameplay wise it’s not great, sadly. Controlling the goose is a royal pain and getting him in the right positions to pick up items can be unnecessarily difficult. He also has a nasty habit of getting caught on the scenery and that’s without any unnecessary wing extensions. I forgave this though because the game is simple fun and that’s not something that happens that often.

The overall arch of the game sees you travel from the garden, to a street with shops, some more gardens and a pub. Each area has its own list of ways for Goose to be annoying. While Goose cannot be killed, probably because he’s not a fox, he can be shooed away and this happens every time you are seen doing something you shouldn’t be. What’s incredible about this though is that the NPCs are a total glutton for punishment. One women shoos you with a broom, which you can break by grabbing, but she doesn’t do anything else to try and stop you coming back for more harassment. It get’s so far that you can even lock her in her garage, which adds to the hilarity.

The NPC’s biggest piece of resistance is… whipping out a ‘No Geese’ sign. Yep, like that’s going to stop you stealing their shit. Essentially this just works as your cue to trigger the last piece of shenanigans before moving on to the next area.

The music is sinfully annoying but you won’t notice it too much because you will be focusing on trying to manoeuvre Goose into doing the next crazy thing on the list. Graphically, it’s cartoony and that’s fitting with the subject matter.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

There are five achievements for playing through the various areas and completing the overarching storyline. After that, there is a load of miscellaneous stuff to do for the remaining achievements and the game wins some points here as each area has a reset function so if you do get stuck, you can reset and start again. Essentially, this means that none of the achievements are missable.

I complained about the controls above and unfortunately, I think game acknowledges the controls are terrible because one of the biggest challenges early on is getting a cabbage to a picnic blanket. This is hard because Goose can drag or pick up loads of stuff… but not a cabbage. This means you have to play football with the cabbage to walk it over to the picnic blanket. This was hard enough but the game takes this one step further for another achievement in another area.

In the second area, there is a football being kicked around by a little kid. Again, without being able to pick it up, you have to guide the football through the second area, passed two NPCs in the third area, who both overzealously shoo you away, through three garden fences before pushing it between some goal posts. The hardest part of this is the last garden with the goal because some genius put the goal at the top of the garden, which happens to be at the top of a massive slope. So you can get the ball all the way to the end and then lose it, and it rolls to the bottom of the garden. It’s a struggle to then get behind it to push it up the hill and an even bigger struggle in getting it in to the goal.

Another notable one is for collecting five flowers from around the map and placing them in basket in a back alley. This is tricky as you have to know what flowers count as there are several non-achievement related flowers throughout the game. Also, there is a bit of a problem with the list in general as the majority of these things are secret achievements. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to work out which random things are achievement related but I’ve moaned about this before.

And that lastly leaves the meta game of doing runs through each area against the clock. I was a bit concerned about these as there is a lot of randomness that happens throughout the game, however it became quickly apparent that the 7 minute time limit is actually more than enough time to complete each area. The third area can do one though. One of the objectives is for getting one of the NPCs to put a bow on you by pretending to be a goose statue. It seems completely random whether or not the NPC either mistakes you for the statue or shoos you away for being a real goose and this is fine in the normal game, but when you’re up against the clock, it’s unfair.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Secret Achievement issues aside, Untitled Goose Game is a game that serves to remind people that games can actually be fun by tasking you with doing a load of random things. The only issue is one of price. Doing everything on the achievement list, which is effectively doing everything the game has to offer twice, can take between six to eight hours if taken at a leisurely pace. The game is currently retailing at £16.74 so it’s not great value for money.