Man, I miss Metal Slug. I fondly remember starting Mame32 on my Pentium 4, loading up one of the Metal Slug roms and blasting fools for hours... yeah, getting older sucks. So when a game like Mighty Goose comes along and I get a chance to play it well, I am a kid once again and life is easy.
Mighty Goose will put a smile on your face for a couple of reasons, one being that it's just plain old-school dumb fun. It's a 2D side-scrolling shoot 'em up featuring an augmented bounty hunter goose rocking bionic arms and legs traveling the galaxy to "let the goose loose". Mighty Goose runs, jumps, shoots and dodges, and looks mighty dashing while doing so. With a similar look and vibe as the games of old such as Metal Slug, Mighty Goose excels at paying tribute while introducing some new modern features.
After you beat a level, you unlock new chips that you can slot in that improve, change or add some new ability to the Mighty Goose. You also can select and switch your secondary attack ranging from well, you know, honking cause that's something geese do to summoning a Gears of War Hammer of Dawn type attack. The goose can also have a companion during the levels which also serves as the character your friend can control in co-op.
Mighty Goose has a blaster equipped on his arm, but can also pick up new limited use weapons like LMG, a shotgun, a tesla gun, and a rocket launcher. These weapons obliterate the enemies in spectacular ways. Tanks, bikes, planes, and fricking mechs can also be mounted for some devastating attacks. Mowing enemies down fills up the mighty meter which allows you to basically go Super Sayan, you become invincible and the weapon attacks and their effects are increased tenfold. This becomes especially useful during boss fights where you need to take down massive bosses.
The presentation is great too. I have said it before many times, I am a sucker for pixel art games. Mighty Goose has beautifully detailed pixel art with glorious animations and some really nice effects like slow-mo, lens flares, and a lot of explosions. Very often the screen gets filled with a lot of stuff, maybe a bit too much that makes identifying and dodging incoming attacks a tad difficult. Maybe a different color or a deeper one for bullets can improve this? This art style combined with a great soundtrack pumps you up and well, it's a hell of a good time.
It's a short game, can be beaten in a couple of hours and once you are done, you can replay the game in a New Game+ mode with even more enemies and a bigger challenge. I would have loved to see the "true ending", but unfortunately as I was in the last levels in NG+, the power in my building got cut off and somehow once I opened the game again, I had lost my progress, like a couple of hours of it. So be aware of this potential bug.
I really enjoyed my time with Mighty Goose. It's a beautiful tribute to the games I played when I was a young kid and well, that makes Mighty Goose extremely worth it in my books. Thanks for reading.
Mighty Goose is available now on Switch, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. A PS4 code was provided by the publisher for this review.
