If you've ever found yourself wondering what Hitman would look like if the protagonist were a large goose, this is the game for you.

This is a stealth puzzle game in which the eponymous bird needs to go through a village in rural England, causing havoc with an unspecified (though very much present) ultimate agenda.

The general goal is to get from A to B in each of the interconnected areas that compose the neighborhood, causing enough mischief to have a human open the way forward to the next zone, but the goose sees fit to also add further objectives that range from playful to petty to just plain malicious: you might have to steal a woman's vase and bring it to the neighbor's yard, just so he will break it while trying to return it. You might have to move a flower pot so someone accidentally clips the neighbor's prize-winning rose while trimming their hedges, or trick a young boy inside a phone booth to lock him inside, and this after stealing his toy and bringing it to the toy shelf of the general store so he has to buy it back... just because. Simply put, this goose is a real bastard.

It's all very comical, the stylized cel shaded visuals, fluid animation and piano soundtrack that picks up whenever the goose is in trouble or waddling at top speed complement the action perfectly and there is a great sense of accomplishment in figuring out and executing each puzzle.

The attention to detail is phenomenal: there is a completely missable aftermath to the havoc you cause; where most games (often including Hitman itself) might be content with the meat of the action, here you will see the woman glueing the vase together, or the neighbor putting the award-winning rose back on the stem with sticky tape. There is also something incredibly amusing in seeing the humans put up makeshift "no geese allowed" signs after you have exasperated them enough. It's excellent.

That said, a little bit more polish would have done the game a world of good; sometimes it is difficult to achieve the intended result, especially when strict timing is of the essence: the goose gets bounced around like crazy when entering a human's personal space, so things like untying someone's shoelaces, stealing a slipper off their foot or a hat off their head can be unreasonably fiddly.

Humans are also a bit overeager to retrieve their stolen property, and will go almost to the ends of the earth to do so, meaning you will have to find somewhere to hide it where they cannot go, like under a table or inside some shrubbery, or they will negate your progress as you try to move on to the next thing.

This is especially frustrating in the very first area, which should be an introductory section to learn the mechanics but is anything but, explaining nothing at all and expecting you to figure it out. One of the goals there is to bring a variety of objects to a picnic blanket, but the gardener who owns the stuff will all too often make trips to the spot to retrieve what's his, which forced me to hide the items in the reeds of the nearby river bank so he wouldn't find them. All you can do is make sure he never finds out about the picnic blanket, because the second he does, he will pick it clean.

There are also a number of glitches, but they can all be resolved by resetting the current map, which thankfully retains your completed objectives.

There is a lot of fun to be had with Untitled Goose Game, and the time commitment is minimal (2-3 hours at most for the base experience). It's more focused than something like the scatterhead Goat Simulator, and less dispersive and confusing than the overrated Stray so there is no reason not to give this a try, especially if the "play as an animal" genre appeals to you.

There is also a fair bit of replay value, since the aforementioned end game challenge mode is very good and anything but simple to conquer, with far more complex objectives requiring a lot of creative thinking.

With a bit more content and that little bit of extra polish, this could have been even more enjoyable but it's excellent enough as it is.

Reviewed on Mar 27, 2023


Comments