‘Goat Simulator 3’ offers season’s bleatings with “Mandatory Holiday” update

Goat Simulator 3’s first content update, the Christmas-themed “Mandatory Holiday update”, is available for free right now.

• READ MORE: ‘Goat Simulator 3’ review: goat theft auto
  

Developer Coffee Stain North announced the festive update through a new trailer (seen below), showing its titular goats spreading Christmas-themed chaos.

The goats now have a variety of Christmas outfits, from a Santa hat to an elf tunic and shoes. It’s not all Christmas-focused either, with players now having the ability to style their goats in a fetching set of Menorah Horns, in celebration of Hanukkah.

Goat Simulator 3 players will also have some new toys to play with too – such as the Sack & Sleigh which will launch wrapping paper, turning any NPCs it hits into Christmas presents. There’s also the Lights Machine Gun, which lets the player hang up rows of festive lights – with the unfortunate downside of electrocuting any unsuspecting NPCs who walk into it.

The Mandatory Holiday update is the first addition to the game since it launched on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 17 this year. The game, which is actually the second entry to the franchise, was critically well-received at launch, earning 4 stars in NME’s review.

Our review explained that the game’s “ragdoll shenanigans get old fairly quickly,” pointing out that “there are only so many times you can laugh at a car flung into orbit before it starts to feel like commonplace jank, and in single-player it soon feels like trying to force a laugh out of yourself.”

Still, Goat Simulator 3 redeems itself through its quests, which makes it feel much more expansive than the original Goat Simulator. However, it isn’t a game to be played solo – as our review points out, “Goat Sim doesn’t stay engaging for very long if you’re playing on your own. Though the game can be played entirely single-player, a lot of the gags and jokes simply aren’t funny if you don’t have someone to share the laughter with.”

In other gaming news, Phil Spencer has accused Playstation of trying to grow by “making Xbox smaller,” as the companies continue to exchange blows over the proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition.