Goblin game review round-up
are you tired of being nice does your back ache from carrying the hopes and dreams of precarious worlds are you done seeking Redemption do you want to Scurry do you want to skulk do you want to eat trash and cause problems if so I’ve got some good news for you you don’t have to be the chosen one you can just go Goblin Goblin is a catch-all term for Fey folk with ill intent in European folklore there are usually a couple hands tall pointy little teeth covered in hair just about every culture has some sort of
awful little guys that cause problems for fun for centuries goblins served as a convenient folklore scapegoat for any of the rotten life could throw at us a missing spoon a strange smell in the house baby theft then in the 1930s J.R.R Tolkien repurposed goblins transforming them from mischievous household troublemakers into Twisted little Servants of an evil God Tolkien used Goblin and orc fairly interchangeably but in a half century of derivative fantasy fiction that followed most creators settled into an orc to Goblin Spectrum with Orcs being bigger and more imposing and goblins being hostile but physically
unimpressive little jerks then in 2019 Twitter user Leon invented Goblin posting a comedic Counterpoint to radical softness Goblin posting gave voice to a growing sentiment these awful Little Creatures weak desperate and ugly they were
if you’re looking to go Goblin mode in video games there are some pretty good options so I reviewed them using my custom Goblin appraisal criteria how do they carry themselves do they care about posture hygiene these are things that we have to worry about as humans but not when we’re going Goblin mode goblins of myth are willful self-serving creatures they do the things they do because they enjoy them we’re out of raw compulsion if they’ve got a plan for world domination they’re thinking too hard this one is exactly what it sounds like when you’re playing
this game does it encourage you to giggle loathsomely to yourself it should Of Orcs And Men is a 2012 action RPG that had a couple of goblin-centric stealth Action follow-ups the goblin designs pull from the standard post tolkenian portrayals hunched posture sneaky creeping Jagged Little daggers so it scores decent marks and personal nastiness button he he who Factor it’s mid it’s a stealth game so it’s got a little bit of that Scamp sauce but there’s very little Whimsy or Joy to the way you play it’s just tactical Espionage and knives to necks the series biggest
downfall is that these goblins have great reasons to be doing what they’re doing framing the Goblins is actually the good guys might be a more subversive fantasy story but it also robs the gobs of the very thing that makes them Charming foreign right out of the gate Middle Earth shadow of war is serving top quality gobbos from the semi-procedurally generated Nemesis to the fully scripted orc companions every nasty little guy you meet oozes Mischief malice and jubilants there’s Orcs who speak in verse Orcs who love to cook Orcs who are voiced by kameo nanjiani for
some reason sure you could kill me now go the predictable route but you’re an original a wild man the problem is that you’re not one of them you’re a boring Ranger with an even more boring ghost living in his brain and while you run with agabies all of the Gabi behavior is Justified as you’re a noble Ranger trying to keep a greater evil at Bay it’s stupid this wow has playable goblins and the lads are Jagged toothed and nasty looking but the ladies are just green this sucks if nastiness isn’t evenly distributed amongst the genders
then there’s no point this is where we have to address the sad truth about Goblin gaming many of the best goblin games don’t actually have folkloric goblins in them but the Untitled Goose games Goose plays the role well the goose isn’t nasty and gnarled but it is a small Menace geese occupy this very gobliny space where they’re big and belligerent enough to be a problem for a human person but they’re small and cute enough that if you punt one like a soccer ball you’re the nasty this Goose also scores high for bad intentions the Untitled
goose is truly in it for the love of chaos there’s no saccharine rug pull where you learn that they are being a menace to I don’t know save their babies or something they just really want to cause Misfortune and horde Baubles and the he he who who factor is simply off the charts just look at this bear with me for a second on this one in Star Wars Force Unleashed you play as Darth Vader’s secret son and he is the strongest Jedi alive but for some reason he only wants to wear dirty rags and stand
like the caveman SpongeBob Meme he’s played by the very handsome Sam whitwer but he’s able to reclaim some nastiness points with his rotten attitude unfortunately he scores pretty low on intent as Vader’s secret Apprentice he’s an agent of the Empire when he inevitably goes Rogue he’s fighting for justice believing in a Cause not gobliny but here’s what brought Starkiller to the dance his he he who who factor is astronomically bananas he’s got a lot of deadly techniques for wiping enemies off the face of the Earth but he’s also got Force grip perhaps the most hilariously
sadistic ability in any game ever you can pick up your enemies and move them around with unnecessary granularity full three axis manipulation no time limit the whole thing is sold by the Euphoria physics engine these guys are flailing and yelling the whole time they’ll Reach For Stuff in the environment and even grab on to their buddies so you’ve just got this barrel of monkeys chain of screaming idiots if you’re goblinly inclined this is the good this game could have had perfect marks if Starkiller was a bit less repressed more useless and 11 inches tall ghostrick
is a Nintendo 3DS Poltergeist game with inventive gameplay amazing character design and stunning animation but it’s not a goblin game do you have a goose isn’t a goblin either so that kind of like negates like why why would a ghost not be a goblin well because like like you can call like a goose a goblin or you can call a guy a goblin because those are just things right and a ghost is already a different thing from a guy or a goose right you could look at you could look at your cat right if your
cat’s being a little and you’re like oh you’re being a real Goblin right now but you wouldn’t like look at a ghost flying around your apartment and say you’re being a real goblin because you’re being a ghost and if your cat goes ghost mode you got a different problem that’s right but is Agent 47 a goblin the biggest Mark against agent 47’s Goblin status is his absolutely perfect posture physically he is not goblining he’s clean efficient and strong he’s also not especially willful or rude while he operates beyond the laws of common man he’s usually
just doing what someone else told him to do but Agent 47 comes to life when the player is in control together you hoard coins and cans of soda and knives and wrenches you gas like goons by turning the lights on and off over and over again you giggle and Scurry from room to room swinging constantly between untraceable masterminded fragile little pest and you do this the Clockwork worlds of Hitman really sell the goblin fantasy the people around you seem genuinely annoyed vexed and sometimes frightened by your antics in order to be a proper Goblin you
need proper victims a league of straight men to let you know just how bad you’re up their day Hitman gives that to you if only it gave you this we return to the Realms of traditional Goblin Hood with the game that may provide the most holistic Goblin role play ever folkloric goblins are known for causing problems around the house in total Warhammer that house is the whole world on the nastiness scale these are straight tens even though we’re using five in our rating system the green skin faction most closely resembles the tolkenian ideal a loose
Confederation of goblins and Orcs with terrible posture gnarled teeth Rusty blades and body Cockney accents they’re good and their intent is bad but in a fun way Warhammer is an awful world to live in full of hateful self-righteous pompous factions vying for control the Orcs and goblins are the only ones having fun because they simply love to fight they’re a roving band of fantasy football Hooligans whipping themselves into a foam of not rage but destructive Euphoria there are few if any ulterior motives just the overriding need to be the biggest nastiest Boyd Aries and if
we’re willing to once again broaden our definition of goblinism they’re not the only Stars the skaven are a faction of perpetually terrified rat people they don’t show up to battle with any particular bravado but they do bring Whimsical unethical war machines they’re driven by a Relentless desire to survive and eat and they’ve decided that the path to Salvation lies in obsessively overclocking their Rigs and finally there’s nurgle’s little guys they are perhaps the nastiest of all just look at them their intent is to spread illness and Decay not out of any particular malice but simply
because that’s what they do that’s pretty gobliny the he he who who rating here is also excellent not just because these factions have unscrupulous play Styles and mechanics but because they set you up to role play the problem I have in most games that give me a choice of how to act is that I don’t like being mean or sadistic especially when it means my virtual companions will be disappointed in me but total Warhammer doesn’t just give you permission to be bad it makes being bad a victory condition and if you pick one of the
Gabi factions the stupid snobby humans already have an overwhelmingly poor opinion of you that’s what I need I need to be told that the best way to regenerate my troops is to eat my captives I need to be told that my God will only love me if I give an entire continent diarrhea I need to be forced to role play doing things I wouldn’t normally do there are no Bridges to be burned no moral authorities just tacit permission to be greedy mean and unclean while the Goblins of yore were a magical embodiment of life’s inconveniences
and pain going Goblin mode is an opportunity to get off the receiving end of that it’s a chance to give your most pathetic fearful destructive Tendencies a gnarled little Avatar and set them loose in a world where nobody actually gets hurt that’s me
