My cow is named "Cowsauce".Nickelodeon's Barynard is a single player adventure game, but with a large portion of mini-games. As an amazing bipedal cow, the player embarks on a quest to win the recognition of the other farm critters and become the "ultimate party animal."
Starting as the new cow in town, players can select the gender, appearance (from about five cow breeds) and name of the character. Now placed in the barnyard, the cow is free to talk to other characters, smash crates, pick flowers, churn butter from milk directly from its own udders, and various other marginally productive shenanigans. To make real progress, missions from other characters must be accepted. These, much like me and my cohort's endless World of Warcraft jokes, start at characters with big yellow exclamation marks over their heads. They're easy to find, so getting stuck not knowing what to do in Barnyard is nearly impossible, and after getting the epic mount bicycle, it's even more convenient to go from mission to mission. Some of the missions are just fetch quests, but many are actually fairly fun mini-games. After completing these, they are available for play from the main menu, and the game tracks and saves high scores as well. The downside to mini-games is that they're only single-player, even though many of them seem perfectly ideal for multiplayer. Go figure.
The best mini-games seem to be inspired by Gary Larson's The Far Side. Teasing the mailman by dancing around behind his back and reverting to all fours when he turns around is pretty funny, and taking the farmer's truck for a street race is fun stuff, too. My personal favorite is the whack-a-mole mini-game, pretty much only because it has the best hoe-down banjo dance music in a game since Blast Corps. It's true, I replayed it numerous times just to listen to that music again and again. I am also a complete psychopath.
There's another side goal, too. Coins earned or collected can be spent at the gopher's shop. By purchasing furniture, games like pool and darts, etc., these items can be added to the happenin' barn/night club. How very Animal Crossing!
In the category of things that suck about this game, the graphics are fairly choppy, and the load times are strangely long and also cause a lot of noise from the disc reader for some reason. The game also froze on these loading screens a few times, and without auto-saves, that's definitely an extra helping of suck. Also, like every other reviewer on the internet, I'm pretty much obligated to tell you that the male cows have udders, and a portion of the game is spent blasting other characters with them like some sort of god-awful bukkake party.
Barnyard isn't really the kind of game I could see readers of this site buying, but some fun can be gleaned from it. It would be an all right buy for younger kids if they really, really like Barnyard or 3D adventure games that aren't too complicated.
Pros:
Great soundtrack Create your own main character Plenty of mini-games
Cons:
All of those mini-games are only single-player Long load times and an occasional freeze while loading That's not how cow physiology works
Graphics: 6.5
Nothing fancy and not 60 frames per second, but its clear and colorful. Being able to select an appearance for your own character is a dandy addition. However, it seems like the loading time for new scenes is way too long for these relatively simple graphics.
Sound: 8.5
Some good voiceovers and great music, especially if you are hosting a hillbilly dance party.
Control: 7.5
Standard 3D platformer/adventure game controls. Controls are explained for each mini-game, although not always clearly.
Gameplay: 6.5
Some simple fetch quests and item collecting, but some fun and silly mini-games. Ideally, some of the mini-games would be multiplayer, but it's a one-player only game.
Lastability: 7.0
It doesn't seem to take too long to unlock all the mini-games. A couple multi-hour sessions will do it. They can be accessed from the menu without playing the main game, save high scores, and some are quite fun
Final: 7.0
It's definitely a kid's game, and one could definitely do a lot worse in that category. Some of the mini-games are really cool, and most are at least decently fun. The long load times and occasional freezeup are a real downer, though. Not a bad purchase for a kid who likes Nickelodeon's Barnyard, especially if it can be found for twenty bucks or so.
Topic: REVIEWS: Barnyard (Read 1768 times)
