Most adult gamers are undoubtedly turned off by games featuring cows on their covers -- doubly so if there is a Nickelodeon endorsement on the back. So prepare yourself: Barnyard is pretty good. Mind you, it's still aimed squarely at a younger age group, but that doesn't impact its pure charm and amusing smattering of gameplay elements. So feel free to pick up a copy for your teen and pre-teen kids, and don't be surprised if you find them having a relatively good time.

Still, we must admit to being a little distressed by several of the main characters, starting with our own. You see, when you start Barnyard, you get to choose a gender for your cow. Not to be too obvious, but in real life all cows are female, and prominent udders and the aggressive squirting of milk are conspicuous features of the game. Later in Barnyard, when female cow Daisy catches the eye of male cow Otis, the whole business of gender confusion may prompt you to sit down with your children and sort out any resulting befuddlement.


But if you can look past the occasional weirdness, you'll find a surprisingly engaging game underneath, with the gameplay features of platformers and RPGs, and the free roaming of Grand Theft Auto. Once you've named your cow, you meet the various inhabitants of the barnyard, who do their best to hide their humanoid antics from the vegetarian farmer that runs the place. The main structure is mission based: You get invitations to visit other animals via cell phone text messages (where they carry the phones is best left to your imagination), and they give you a task to complete. A good number of these jobs are mini-games that you can visit as often as you want, and the more often you play them, the better chance you have of earning top scores. The highest scorers earn stars, and the more stars you earn, the closer you get to top cow status.

While some of these games fall flat, most of them are good fun. In Tease the Mailman, you get a sequence of button presses that, when performed correctly, result in some hysterical animations as you mock the mailman from behind. In another mini-game, you fling a chicken from a slingshot, and then maneuver him through various rings on an unexpectedly long course through the sky and into an open barn window. Other games include billiards, a cute golfing variation, and protecting the veggie patch from raccoons. A few are relative duds, though, such as the honey-collecting game, where you need to avoid bees while scouring honey from the hive.