Goat Simulator 3, the second in the Goat Simulator series, faced an impossible task: how to make a bigger and better sequel to one of the cornerstones of the joke physics game genre, a genre that is supposed to be goofy, kinda shitty, and cheesy. How to.

Coffee Stain North's answer was to use the foundation of Goat Simulator to create collectathon 3D platformers like Spyro and Mario 64. The result provided some genuine laughs, but its clever moments are pieced together by the very same kind of tedious, open-world checklist experience that Coffee Stain often skewers with jokes. The result is better than the original, but not enough to recommend it.

The original Goat Simulator was a huge hit in 2013. I see it as the evolving missing link between Garry's Mod and newer releases like Prop Hunt and Crab Game, but in my own review at the time (opens in new tab), Andy Kelly rated it 30%, calling it "a joke stretched too thin . and beyond the eye-catching premise, this is just a bad, amateurish, boring game."

A bit harsh, but not necessarily disagreeable. I remember a friend of mine bought Goat Simulator back in the day and we enjoyed it for a couple of hours on his laptop in the dorm. Once I got laid, I never touched it again.

The first Goat Simulator was a small, unstable physics sandbox where you used head butts and sticky tongues to destroy the scenery and harass NPCs while racking up high scores. Add in a few Easter eggs and nifty features like a playable diegetic version of Flappy Bird (remember, it's 2013) and that's pretty much it.

Goat Simulator 3 offers the same basic movement and interaction tools, with the addition of 3D Super Mario's escalating three-step jump (wah, wah, wah, wah, wah). Completing the side quests builds hubs like Elden Ring's Round Table Hold, and completing them all unlocks the final boss and accomplishes Goat Simulator 3's "main quest."

I found the side quests to be rather tedious. Side quests usually just instruct you to headbutt something or drag a person or object to the correct location. However, the intentionally vague instructions can be a bit of a revelation and genuinely funny or surprising. In one quest, you are instructed to save "Steve" from drowning in a hot spring. There is a man obviously floating in the pond, but when you catch him, his name is "not Steve." Searching around in the water, he discovers that one of the carp is actually named "Steve" and must be dragged out.

As the "Steve" gag suggests, Goat Simulator 3's humor is not limited to the antics of a glitchy ragdoll. Each quest has a punchline, and even the boring side quests have twists and gags that made me chuckle. It just wasn't enough to overcome the monotony. After seeing everything and filling up the map, I went into open world trance: open map, follow objective, complete, rinse and repeat; it took me six hours to unlock the final boss in Goat Simulator 3, but by that point I was ready to do almost anything else I was ready to do almost anything else.

No sense of escalation: you can go almost anywhere from the start. I unlocked the wings near the beginning of the game to glide like Spyro, but I rarely had to remove them. This goat can also drive a car and, with a single physical glitch, can leap into the air with a single stroke. As if Coffee Stain had introduced these elements for a more structured single player experience, it seemed out of place, as if you could slide around the entire map in an hour or two and see it all. The demand to stay true to the roots of the physical game clashed with the ambition to make the game more premium and substantial.

There are some highlights in the side quests. One pretty bare-bones mission unlocks a hippie Van Wizard pocket dimension that allows you to fly around a floating asteroid. It's like the platforming challenge in Super Mario Sunshine (open in new tab) that everyone either loves or hates, and Goat Simulator 3 could have used more levels like this.

Similarly, some of the quests in Goat Simulator 3 opened up into a bit of a referential side area, with gameplay homages to what you'd find in the NieR series. The snob in me likes to say that references are the lowest form of comedy, but Goat Simulator 3 is convincingly committed to this bit, and I quite liked that little shout-out. I definitely had a chuckle when building a sandcastle opened a portal that recreated de_dust2 from Counter-Strike, or when the game started with an endless recreation of the iconic cart rides from Skyrim.

Goat Simulator 3 also introduces online co-op multiplayer for up to four players and a selection of multiplayer mini-games found in the open world nodes. We were not able to try these mini-games during this review. The addition of online play is certainly welcome, as most games are more fun to play with friends, but the novelty of sharing Goat Simulator 1 antics with friends in 2013 did not last long.

It's hard to recommend Goat Simulator 3 to anyone. When I first booted it up, I was excited at the prospect of a game like "Mario Odyssey" or "Sable" with collectibles and puzzle-like side quests. But "Goat Simulator 3" quickly showed its hand and I just got bored. It might be fun to have a little goat perform weird ragdoll physics stunts, but at a time when the niche of jokey physics games is more crowded with options than ever before, $30 is a lot of money for the privilege.

Teardown and Bonelab offer genuine innovation in destructive physics and VR integration, respectively, while Garry's Mod, the ancestor of them all, is only $10 for a whole universe of modding possibilities. "Goat Simulator 3" has a clever sparks of humor, but overall it's more like a competent slapstick goofball sandbox where a goat can run for mayor.