When you see the amount of weird stuff they’re bombarded with, it’s no wonder that kids today are confused. Based on a Nickelodeon animated movie set in a farmyard and its quiet surrounding countryside, and featuring a cast of talking animals you’d think that Barnyard is gentle, parent-friendly fare, but to be honest it’s unlikely to de-confuse anyone – least of all me. To name but just a few, I’ve played games as a hedgehog, an Italian plumber, a baby dragon & crocodile, a bandicoot, a kangaroo, a red spot, a pink blob, even a posh female archaeologist with massive breasts, and I’ve never been this confused. Let me explain; you play as a cow (fair enough - nice bit of originality there), but then one of the first things you have to do is pick the sex of your character - a male or female cow?! - do you see?

So anyway, once you’ve got your head round playing as a male cow (complete with udder - but hey, maybe there's a nuclear plant just over the hill) one of the first things you learn to do is squirt things with milk from your teats. No, really, you do! Finding this all deeply disturbing for all sorts of reasons (I don’t know why as it’s not long ago I was killing fiery enemies by peeing on them while playing as Conker), I changed to a female cow (you can be Archie or Angie), which is the way I believe God intended them to be, and once I’d done that then milk squirting didn’t seem quite so bizarre.

Having zoomed around (there's limited "sprint" ability whether you're riding or on foot - or do I mean "hoof") and thrown my cow around a bit on this bike during a road test that Jeremy Clarkson would have been proud of, I soon found I was having more fun than with the last Tony Hawk or Matt Hoffman game. You can do wheelies and jumps, and they even threw in a few tricks for you to do while airborne! The various other main characters (other cows, a mouse, a pig who cooks and makes cocktails, a gang of gophers, a mommy chicken and the farm dog) all give you missions, they’ll either give them to you when they talk to you or via your mobile phone – you are one hip & trendy cow if nothing else…

For all its oddities, Barnyard is never less than charming and fun to play. A gentle learning curve will mean that the target audience I envisage (5-9 year-olds) will have few problems with most of it, and suitably simple and intuitive controls don’t detract from the gameplay, but rather enhance it. I haven’t seen the movie (featuring the voices of Kevin James, Courtenay Cox, Andie Macdowell, Sam Elliott & Danny Glover) but I’d imagine it’s relatively faithful, whilst still packing in some varied gameplay and plenty of fun. A couple of gripes would be that it has no auto save facility (a bad idea to leave it out of a kids game) and that some of the loading times can feel intrusive. Nevertheless it’s just about perfect for kids but Mum or Dad are likely to tire of it before the first cock crows - especially if they have to explain away the boy cows with udders...