DEEEER Simulator Review (PS4) – oh DEEEER oh DEEEER
DEEEER Simulator will delight the kids, but that’s about it. The Finger Guns Review;
I hate this game. I want to pelt this stupid ass deer into furthest depths the of the sun and watch it melt. .
Now, I’ve not started a review like that before. Normally I’m the ‘benefit-of-the-doubt’ reviewer of the Finger Guns team. No, really. I rarely score anything as low as I’m scoring this absolute bum of a game purely because I’m a believer in the saving grace of something in every game that will appeal to someone. Kids will see something in this game which will appeal to them, perhaps.
I’d like to think the sheer amount of incredible entertainment for kids these days will ensure they turn their nose up at such unfathomable nonsense but it might not be the case. DEEER Simulator (yes, that’s how I have to write out the title of this sodding ‘video game’) is such a cluster of misery to the point of utter despair. I’ve never deleted something off my console so fast. And I reviewed Agents of Mayhem.
So what appealed to me? I kinda have a soft spot for Goat Simulator and I had a feeling this would be a similar bout of nonsensical physics funtimes. I had a feeling beyond the ridiculous title might be a game I can piss about in whilst I take a break from Halo Infinite. Something so utterly pointless it becomes charming.
It didn’t. It’s absolute garbage of a degree one would consider a hazardous wasteland.
Maybe I’m just getting old but I didn’t laugh once. There’s something about the ragdoll madness which does appeal, even if it’s been done to the very best of its possible abilities in the aforementioned Goat Sim (the actual GOAT of this ‘genre’), so anything feels like its reaching and failing to hold on much like Goat did. It’s never going to reach those heights and yet here we are, pissing into the wind like a teenager on The X Factor that’s been told she can sing but actually sounds like a psychopathic hyena being pushed through an industrial car crusher.
So what in the actual hell do you do in, ugh, DEEEER Simulator? Well, kids! Gather round, let your cynical asshole Uncle tell you all about the worst video game he’s played all year.
Shocking no-one, you play as a deer. A deer who can stretch his neck like a pervert giraffe to bother innocent bystanders. Your deer can run and throw grenades. You start the game as a human, a fairly decent one at that. He sees a deer about to be run over and he jumps in and saves its life. Unfortunately, his sacrifice means he’s now reborn as a deer, this bloody deer and now he wants to go on a rampage for seemingly no reason whatsoever. You see, there is a story! Even if it is hamstrung together like a JJ Abrams Star Wars trilogy.
And that’s about it. Now, this may be enough to ensure you never ever want to find out what happens next and that’s completely fair. There’s absolutely nothing on offer here that one could consider ‘entertaining’ or, dare I say ‘fun’. It’s a video game created for the sole purpose of not having a point. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, we all need a way to escape the existential horror of our meaningless existences, after all, but why this? Why frikkin’ DEEEER Simulator? No, not every game has to have a deep meaningful story, not every game has to be Shakespeare to be entertaining.
Hell, one of my favourite shooters of all time is bloody Bulletstorm because whilst it offers absolutely nothing to the genre, it’s just fun as hell. This isn’t fun. This is getting your asshole ripped in two because you accidently sat on the back of Sonic instead of Tails.
Just give me something to enjoy. Anything at all. The game is fully aware it’s dumb as hell but they seem to have forgotten to make it ‘dumb fun’. There’s sequences where you can strap AK 47’s to your horns and shoot the police up (the police which are polar bears. Polarice. Poliar Bears? I don’t know) in a standoff. It’s not awful, it’s just meaningless. The bizarre joy of Goat Simulator is that at least when you’re racking up scores it all feels like it has a semblance of a meaning. Here, I couldn’t attach myself to the enjoyment and the carnage simply because it’s either all been done before or it’s not worth your time. It’s both, actually. Yeah, it’s definitely both.
And dare I bring up the Saints Row franchise twice in a review about a deer simulator but it suffers from the very same problem that turned that series into a virus. Your powers are all available from the very beginning, so you’re not aiming towards unlocking new powers or becoming stronger. It became as stale as a corpse with rigor mortis within fifteen minutes as I took down building after building with my confusing viagra neck. Ugh.
That’s enough now. DEEEER Simulator is trash. It looks terrible and makes me appreciate the similar Totally Reliable Delivery Service all the more. It’s an absolute cluster of ideas that have been achieved with far more celebration elsewhere, and I’m at a loss about how it even made it onto consoles in the first place.
Look, yeah. The younglings in your family may just get something out of this. It’s colourful and ridiculous after all. But the aforementioned Totally Reliable Delivery Service and Goat Simulator does everything this does and does it so, so much better.
Take it away. Send it to the depths. Just leave me alone forever, DEEER Simulator. You had your chance and you blew it.
Designed to be watched on YouTube and not played, DEEEER Simulator is a tragic attempt to recapture the bizarre ragdoll madness of Goat SImulator and others like it. With virtually nothing to recommend, avoid this disaster as far and wide as you possibly can. Even if it is on Game Pass.
DEEEER Simulator is available now on PS4, PS5 (review platform), Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Switch and PC.
Developer: Gibier Games
Publisher: Playism
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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