Goat of Duty (PC) Review

Goat of Duty is a third person multiplayer shooter themed around goats. Yes… Goats! The gameplay is like Quake 3 but Goat of Duty could use a lot of fine tuning to make it less janky and less chaotic. Overall I can see this as a fun yet short experience for a small groups of friends. Oh, and you can LAN the game actually!

Gameplay

Movement

Goat of Duty plays like how would expect any 3rd person arena shooter to play except you’re a goat with a gun attached. “WASD” for movement, “Spacebar” for jump, and the mouse to aim, shoot and change weapons. The difference comes with jokes like “Bleat” and “Fake Death” and a ramming move called “Charge” where you accelerate and can ram opponents.

Faking your death is funny as a once off gag but using it in combat can, ironically, be effective. You can dupe enemies and move your dead, limp body slowly to a health drop.

When you ram an enemy correctly with Charge they can get damaged and flung into the air and ragdoll. When this happens to you the camera zooms out a bit awkwardly and when you regain control your camera zips back to normal. On the other hand it is very satisfying to ram an opponent off an edge or to death.

Game Modes

You have 4 modes – Free For All, Herd Wars (Team Deathmatch), Gun DM (Deathmatch) and Fus Ro Arena. The first 2 are self explanatory. Gun DM is a Free For All but every player starts with the same weapon and after a certain number of kills they get a new weapon until they’ve reached the kill limit and have used every weapon in-game. Fus Ro Arena mode is where all players are equipped with a Fus Ro Bleat (basically a Fus Ro Dah! gun that pushes enemies) and the objective is to push enemies into hazards or off edges. This is a very fun mode where a lot of suicide happens as goats fall off edges and fly into the air!

Level Design

There are 7 maps with each having a variation for the Fus Ro Arena mode. Some maps are well done: they’re spacious, fun, weapon and health drops are well placed. Other maps are a bit too chaotic. You can get rammed in between pipes, tight spaces and get stuck a bit. The camera goes janky when you’re rammed in these small spaces which can be a nuisance. You also get classic little camper spots you can sit at where you wait for the overpowered weapon to spawn and then snipe goats from a distance.

Network

At the moment, there’s a fair amount of players hosting matches. The ping is also surprisingly bearable (as a player from South Africa)! I’ve played off someone’s match in Belgium and played alongside some Japanese and Korean players (so possibly Japan and South Korea?). You can also host LAN matches which is a nice touch! The host picks the game mode and players vote on maps. It’s a good, simple system.

User Interface

The menus are decent and easy to understand. There’s some room for fine tuning resolutions and displays especially on the HUDS and match ending screens. I enjoy the goat-themed kills, bot names and skins you can get in-game. These can be humorous references ranging from games, to movies to anime (such as a Tracer goat, an Immortan Joe goat and a Naruto goat). The skins are earned through playing games so no micro-transactions needed!

Overall

Goat of Duty is a fun little parody of modern shooters centered around goats and cartoonish violence. The absurdity of flying goats, decapitated goats and exploding goat fireworks is entertaining in short bursts. The game is clunky at times but what would you expect playing as a goat? Recommended to confused grandmothers everywhere who don’t really know what Call of Duty is but this is close enough for lil’ Johnny’s birthday.