Review: Untitled Goose Game is a difficult delight

I downloaded Untitled Goose Game to my Nintendo Switch a few days ago. It's the most self-abusive fun that I've had (with a video game, I mean we're all friends here) since I owned an NES back in the day. If you're not familiar with the game's premise and don't care to watch the video, here's the short of it: You are a goose. You're kind of a dick (becasue goose). You fuck people's shit up. Constantly.

Or if you're me, you try to.

The controls of this game are simple. The laundry list of objectives the goose must fulfill before moving on to each new area are simple too. Completing said list to-do list? That's often more difficult. Some tasks are a breeze: scaring a kid so badly that he locks himself into a phone booth to get away from you was a piece of cake. Attempting to steal multiple items from the same person, collecting them at a single drop point? Kind of a pain. If the person you're stealing from sees you take their stuff, they'll give chase. The best policy is to drop whatever you had in your bill as soon as you're noticed: run too far towards your stash of swag and your hard-won loot will be found and returned from whence it came, forcing you to start all over again, often with your loot stashed in slightly more difficult locales than where you first snagged them from. I didn't expect a goose-related game to take careful planning or involve stealth. It's like playing Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, only with webbed feet. The game's difficulty, combined with the it's humor and whimsical character design all make for an experience that's well worth it's twenty dollar asking price.

I do have one complaint: this is a game about a goose. You can do so many terrible things, but there's no flinging bird crap all over someone's front lawn? Shitting everywhere is the very core of a goose's existence. It seems like a serious oversight in an otherwise outstanding bit of software.