Untitled Goose Game review - a delightful troublemaker

Geese are dicks. I know that, and you know that. I don't think there's a single person who hasn't got a story to share about being terrorised by these feathered menaces, these long-necked shits. My own involves cycling home on the Hertford Union Canal and coming across a small blockade just outside Victoria Park as other cyclists were threatened by one very angry, very aggressive goose. Then, after a short while, it started to attack standers-by, swinging its beak at exposed shins and hissing, its grotesque spiky tongue flapping as it went. Eventually, someone just had enough and kicked the goose square in the neck, forcing it to saunter off. Good. Geese are dicks.

Untitled Goose Game knows that geese are dicks, and makes a virtue of it. Indeed, it makes an entire game out of it, because here you are the goose, terrorising a small village that gently unlocks as you progress through the short adventure. Be the arsehole. Live the dream. It's a concept so pure, so universal, that developer House House didn't even have to bother coming up with a name for its game. You know from the off what it involves. You know from its brilliantly unvarnished name that you want to play it.

And when you do, it's glorious. The first few minutes spent in Untitled Goose Game's company are side-splittingly hilarious - it's no wonder this thing became a small Twitter phenomenon when early gameplay videos first did the rounds - and House House deliver on all the promise the concept implies. The detail here is wonderful, most notably in the goose itself and the pat-pat-pat of its webbed feet, the swagger of its waddle, the bark of its honk. Look at the little jerk go!

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