Previous Next

The first, and probably last, milk-squirtin' cow mini-game title for the Wii.

It's a mini-game party, I just hope you like farm animals. In Barnyard from Blue Tongue Studios, fun and anarchy is had by playing a milk-squirting cow who is new to the farm.

Players start by creating their cow, male, female, American or Angus, etc, and once this is done, your cow can freely roam the farm. As you go around and talk to the other characters, you'll get involved with various mini-games to collect money so you buy furniture for the hottest night spot on the farm - the barn. As you collect new furniture for the barn it becomes more complete. Once it becomes 100% complete, you will be known as the number one party animal.

The entire game is spent running around the farm talking to the various characters from the movie, and taking on missions from them, or challenging them to a mini-game of some sort. Missions can range from squirting milk on sleeping cows, to making butter with your own milk, to buying the first piece of furniture for the barn. The missions are tedious, mainly because of how slow the main character walks. Even when sprinting it takes a while to get to some places in the game. When mini-games are completed, you receive a ranking, Star through F, and the more stars you get the higher your overall ranking on the farm becomes.

Graphically the game is not very impressive. The characters look pretty close to what the movie looked like, as does the world around you. The biggest complaint anyone will have about this is the pop up. It isn't too much of an annoyance since the main character does not move very fast, unless he is on a bicycle. Yes, a cow on a bike.

Controlling the game is probably the best aspect. As you run around, a cursor is displayed on screen wherever you point your Wii Remote, this is where you would squirt milk. As you run around picking up stuff, you must motion with the remote like you are picking something up. One of the games, for example, has you kicking or jumping over a pipe with the needing to player swing the remote left or right to kick left or right, and pulling up on the nunchuck to jump.

As one would guess, since this is a Nick game it is more geared towards kids. So if you have any, they would probably appreciate this game much more than the more mature gamer. Unfortunately, due to the boring missions and the slow moving character and pace, I would pass on Barnyard. At least rent it before you decide to drop fifty bucks on it.