- Title – Untitled Goose Game
- Developer – House House
- Publisher – Panic
- Platform(s) – Microsoft Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (Reviewed)
- MSRP – $19.99
- Release Date – December 17th, 2019
- Review Code was Provided for this Review.
In a year where we’ve had releases such as Luigi’s Mansion 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Control, and many other great games it’s hard to believe that one of the most popular titles of the year is a small-stealth sandbox game following the adventures of a Goose. Untitled Goose Game seemingly came out of nowhere and many didn’t know of the game’s existence until people started talking about it and now a lot of the gaming community has either heard of it or played it for themselves.
Untitled Goose Game thrives on one thing and that’s the game being fun. The premise of the game speaks for itself with the description provided by House House, “It’s a lovely day in the village, and you are a horrible goose”.
When I first started Untitled Goose Game, I didn’t know what to expect as I purposely stayed away from anything pertaining to the game besides Trailers to go in more surprised. When I played for the first hour, I quickly wondered if this game was for me. I wasn’t being hooked in the way I thought I would when I got to the first area. Those feelings quickly changed once I figured out the game more. Certain tasks have to be completed in order to advance to the next area, these tasks got more and more fun to do as time went on.
I went from stealing a boy’s glasses to making a man fall flat on a box of tomatoes. The tasks while I do admit take too long to completely figure out sometimes, are still fun and makes you think how you do things instead of it being explained to you outright. As I said earlier, the description of the game speaks for itself, you terrorize the people of this small town as the Goose, you mess up people gardens, lock them out, trap them in phone booths and garages, and even take their things to make a picnic or fill up a basket. The sheer thought of this amount of damage being done by a Goose is something you have to play to understand for yourself.
Untitled Goose Game also does something that I absolutely love, show attention to detail. I’ve said this in other reviews and I’ll say it again, I appreciate developers who go the extra mile to put things in a game that most won’t even look at or recognize. I was at an outside store and I picked up a fruit and I put it on a food scale, to my surprise the food scale actually went up once I put it on and down when I took it off. Little things like that are appreciated throughout the community and this time is no exception.
We then move on to the controls of Untitled Goose Game and the best way to describe my feelings is “mixed”. They aren’t bad by any means, everything works, but they still feel too slow and stiff. It feels like it takes the Goose a second longer to turn around than it actually should and at times the Goose does certain things you had no intention of wanting to do. The targeting itself is a little “wonky” as well since there are so many items you can pick up in this game, you pick up things you don’t want to a lot because you can’t aim the Goose head properly because of the stiff controls. With a game that has a direct use of stealth and speed, the stiff controlling and targeting make it more frustrating than it should be. They aren’t a gigantic nuisance to the game, but there’s definitely room for improvement.
It’s time to move on to my biggest problem with Untitled Goose Game, its length. You can finish this game in under 2 hours if you wanted, I believe SpeedRunners have clocked in this game at a little over 30 minutes. When I finished the game, I had thoughts going through my mind of enjoying what I had just played, but couldn’t help but feel there should’ve been 2 or 3 new areas to go through before the credits had rolled.
I can’t go on without mentioning the music, while there isn’t much of it, the little that is there is Delightful. The Main Menu tune had me listening to it on repeat for about 10 minutes because of how relaxing it was. It’s funny thinking that they choose this type of Music for such a giddy type of game, but that’s the beauty of it and it all just works.
I wondered if Untitled Goose Game would go down the path of being game that I feel everyone overhyped tremendously. Thankfully that wasn’t the case and after the first hour, I was having so much fun and was excited to play more. House House even went the extra mile and put some extra bonus objectives at the end of the game, which everybody including me always likes.
I had some problems with Untitled Goose Game mainly the Main Game Length and the Stiff Controls, but that doesn’t bring my score of this game down too much. It’s fun and does exactly what I think the developers intended to do, be fun and ridiculous at the same time. If you have a little bit of money to spend and want a short and sweet game, this is it for you. I recommend this to everyone reading this, now only one question remains, When is Untitled Goose Game 2 coming out?
Rating – 8/10
GamebredMatrix 