Barnyard (Wii)

Enter the world of Nickelodeon`s newest adventure and bring the Barnyard movie to life! Battle the coyote invaders, tee up for a game of golf, target the bulls-eye with your flying chicken and race downhill on your speedy bike. Explore a fully interactive, 3D world and prove you have what it takes to be the biggest party animal of them all. Experience the humour and adventure of the hilarious Barnyard movie! 

In a nutshell:
Finally a game to prove that not every movie tie-in has to be rubbish! You enter the world of Banyard as the new cow on the block and explore the world from the movie, meet its characters and see off the lowly coyotes and racoons.

The lowdown:
Most movie tie-ins, particularly kid’s films, have a reputation for being quick, cynical cash-ins. Barnyard though is different in that instead of just creating a series of levels based on action scenes from the movie, it provides a whole living game world for you to explore. Although there are a set of story missions to follow, for most of the time you can just chat to the animals from the movie and help them out with various tasks and mini-games. These games range from controlling Peck the chicken in his latest attempt to fly, to seeing off racoons with a squirt of cow milk. The graphics are really good too, which is another change from the norm.

Most exciting moment:
The best bit of the game is the huge freedom you have to just wander around and do your own thing, with a large world to explore, including two separate farms. There are various vehicles you can use to get around and doing tricks with the cow biker gang is great fun.

Since you ask:
As well as the more complex missions and mini-games there’s also a set of much simpler games that you can play at any time, such as Wack-a-Racoon, darts and pool. A win gives you a new high score and more gopher bucks to spend.

The bottom line:
One of the best kid’s movie games around.- HARRISON DENT