Farm Vet
Ages: Everyone

I highly recommend doing the tutorial because there is no manual. You begin with customizing your character. It doesn't help, the humans look and move decidedly queerly. The animals do better.

You check your PDA to see what tasks are scheduled for the day. Of course there is plenty to do. You start our with the smaller animals: chickens, pigs, rabbits, pigs - if you are good, you go onto cows, goats, horses, and cats and dogs. You choices in working with the animals are - examine, play with and feed. And they all have names. Strange, most farms I know don't give names to each and every animal - certainly not if they are going to sell or eat them.

The routine for examining a sick animal has been pretty well established by now - use magnifying glass to visually inspect, take temperature, heart rate, and respiration, take necessary samples, submit to lab - then prescribe or sometimes bandage. A hint function is useful and so is the map. Clicking on a destination will have your character run wildly through bushes and water to the location indicated - weird and funny. I played with that for awhile.

There are plenty of saves. You can only pause at the end of the day when it gets too dark to work. The game is slow, with an erratic wavering cursor. There is even a long load time to get back to the main menu. Music is appropriately, country swing. Farmer Joe - an unpleasant character, will evaluate your work. I didn't finish some task and he chewed me out for it, saying he was wondering if I was the right person for the job. Well - he was right - me, city girl. The game lacks some basic functions that we expect from games now-a-days. If it was a student project - I certainly would have chewed out the designers.

Fun Factor: There are better vet and farm games.
Female Factor: You can pick gender.
Player Friendly: Confusing and awkward.

Reviewed by: Editor - 06/08