Goat Simulator might have started as a joke, but now it’s all too real

Out This Month is a roundup of some new games that are coming out this month.

MLB 14: The Show
PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita—April 1

I love baseball. Love it. I geek out as much as anyone weeks before pitchers and catchers report for spring training, and there is nothing I’d rather do on a warm summer evening than buy some nose bleeders on StubHub, head over to the park, and put the money I saved on cheap tickets toward some overpriced beers. Therein lies the rub for baseball video games. No matter how much they strive to recreate big-league minutiae—and The Show incorporates an impressive amount of detail, down to Billy Butler’s paunch, Yasiel Puig’s joie de vivre, and Terry Francona’s haunted equanimity—there’s no effective way to replicate the fan experience. Baseball games are long. They can be very boring. (This is where the beer comes in.) The regular season is 162 games. At even 90 minutes per nine innings, playing an entire regular season would take, let’s see…that’s 243 hours, give or take. That’s not a game. That’s a job.

Hot on the heels of March’s Escape Goat 2, Goat Simulator is a goat-themed open world game that re-imagines man’s place in the world vis-a-vis goats. Long dismissed as nature’s trash compactors, goats are apparently poised to become the Earth’s dominant species. How can humanity stand against such reckless mastication?

Near as I can figure it, Conception II requires you, a Lothario warrior child molester, to impregnate a harem of underage girls and birth “star children” to stop “monsters” from “spawning” inside something called the “Pandora Labyrinth.” At least, I’m sure that’s what he told them after rolling down the window of his rented conversion van.

It’s a time of bloody civil war. Altmer battles Nord. Khajiit battles Breton. The Redguards fight entrenched racism. Ken Burns is nowhere to be found, and the Dragonborn won’t be (dragon-)born for another thousand years. This is the world of The Elder Scrolls Online, and before it is over, the casualties will spill over beyond Tamriel’s borders. Relationships will be strained. Children will get obese-er. College exams will be failed. Be it by goat or the Elder Scrolls, our ruin is at hand.

Child Of Light is this month’s recipient of the just-now-invented “Gameological Award For Excellence In The Category Of Strong Female Protagonist That Doesn’t Rely On Men Or Sex Appeal Or Popping Out Star Children And Holy Shit The Art Is Really Good Too So Let’s Play This Game” monthly award.

We rely on smartphones for a lot of things. We use them to check the weather and to look up recipes. We use them to annoy our friends with endless pictures of small children and dogs. We use them as GPS devices. Sometimes, when we’re not using them to avoid talking to someone, we even use them to talk to someone. But we generally don’t use them as a source of light in a haunted asylum while being hunted by an army of the damned. Now, I’ve never read it, but I’d be willing to bet that there is nothing in the iTunes Agreement covering this contingency. And if the supernatural terrors of Daylight are in fact a subtle critique of our collective smartphone overuse, consider me properly chagrined.