Farm Frenzy Review

Players who enjoy feeding animals, gathering items, and capturing wild bears will love playing Farm Frenzy, the interactive task-management game. You must click as fast as possible to gather items like eggs and wool, use these items in machines that make products you can sell at market, and capture the rampaging bears before they toss your animals far away, all while making sure your animals don't starve to death. Whew!

Typical Task Management, But On a Farm

Gameplay is similar to most other games in the genre. You must complete the tasks as fast as possible, using the mouse, in order to reach the goal and complete the level. Farm Frenzy differs from other task-management games because each level has unique goals. Rather than just reaching a specific monetary goal in a certain amount of time, Farm Frenzy will have you gathering a certain number of items (like eggs), or owning a certain animal (which costs money to buy, so you have to earn it first), or even making a certain amount of products (like cupcakes). The variety of goals keep you on your toes, fighting off the curse of task-management games: repetition.

Earn Stars to Buy Upgrades

As the levels progress, you will have several goals to complete at once, which provides a higher level of difficulty. Additionally, there are different time goals to complete the level in. The fastest time slot awards you a gold medal, the second time slot a silver, and the third fastest just completes the level. Completing each level gives you a certain amount of stars, and the silver and gold medals offer larger star bonuses. You use the stars between levels to buy new equipment and upgrade your existing equipment. This is a great incentive to do well on the levels, because the more stars you have, the more upgrades you can make.

Achievements and Trophies

The stars are a great reward for doing well on levels, but Farm Frenzy offers awards for certain achievements completed over the entire game. You can earn a sort of trophy for capturing 100 bears, for gathering 500 items, for getting a gold medal on all the levels, and other accomplishments, which range from the very easy to the really difficult. For those wishing to gloat over their Farm Frenzy domination, the awards can be viewed at any time from the main menu. From there you can also see the requirements for each award, so you can work towards one you haven't earned yet.

This combined with the great length of the game gives it a good amount of longevity; it is worth more than one playthrough and has a lot of incentives for playing it more than once. It also attempts to combat the limitations the game has with its lack of difficulty settings or different modes, which seriously shorten Farm Frenzy's playing life.

Color Graphics

Farm Frenzy boasts some bright, colorful graphics that make the game a lot of fun to look at. It's certainly not the best 3D rendering ever, but it has a great “cartoony” feel that goes really well with the theme of the game. The game is also pretty interactive. When your sheep eats some grass, it slowly disappears as the sheep munches on it. When you catch a bear in a cage, the bear gradually slows down until it is captured. This gives the player a much better interactive experience and makes Farm Frenzy worth playing at least once.

No Real Storyline

One of the major faults Farm Frenzy possess is its lack of a storyline. For this genre of game, a storyline is pretty important. It gives you a reason for doing what you're doing, and goal to work towards. Without an ultimate goal (saving your farm, for example), the lack of real variety in gameplay can become stiflingly boring.

Although you are completing different tasks, the gameplay doesn't change in any real way. Certain levels require more planning and strategy, but for the most part you just click as fast as you can and hope you get what you need. In addition to the lack of difficulty settings or different modes of play this makes Farm Frenzy potentially very repetitive. One minor fault is the font used. It is pretty difficult to read, especially while in a farming frenzy, which can be really distracting from gameplay. This is really minor compared to the aforementioned problems, however.

Conclusion - An Above Average Task Management Game

All in all, Farm Frenzy is a great task-management game that is worth playing. It has a great variety of level goals, a good upgrade system, and awards for in-game accomplishments that are fun to strive for. The colorful graphics add a lot of interest to what you see on the screen, and the interactive nature of everything works well with that. It does have some pretty major faults, like lack of a storyline, but in general Farm Frenzy is a great play and well worth your time.