Review Herdy Gerdy Developer: Core Design Publisher: Eidos Interactive Release Date: March 2002 Platform: Review by Joe Waddington August 26, 2002

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Many times a game will come out that tries really hard to be something, but just seems to miss the mark. When you sit down to think about it, you really cannot pin point why it missed the mark. Something about the game just did not "do it" for you. I am putting Herdy Gerdy into this group of games.

In the game you play a young shepherd boy who has been tasked with winning the Kingdom-wide herding championship in order to save the kingdom from the tyrannical rule of an evil power. Normally, this duty would fall to his grandfather, but someone has cast an enchantment on him and now he is snoring up a storm at home.

So, we must win the championship, save the kingdom and wake up grandpa. So far, so good. Luckily, these quests are interrelated, and solving one will solve all. The down side? Despite being raised by his grandpa, a master herder, the boy seems to know little to nothing about herding. So he must make his way around the kingdom learning the ways of herding. He receives help from villagers, gypsies, and talking moles, teaching him the techniques he will need to win the championship.

Now that you have the basic story, lets move on to the game itself. Gameplay consists of herding different types of animals from various areas in the zone to their perspective stables. Sounds easy, right? Well, each type of animal seems to have its own idiosyncrasies and special needs. Most will not follow you blindly, requiring some kind of motivation to move them along. And to top it all off, there are herd-eating monsters that think that you are the local pizza boy bringing them dinner.

So now we have the storyline and the gameplay. What else is there? Oh yea! FUN! Is this game fun? Um… not really. This game had the potential to be as addicting as Lemmings (I'm dating myself there, aren't I?) but really manages to fall short of it. Maybe it is the mediocre cartoonish graphics, or the annoying cut scenes, or the obnoxiously long load times between levels and cut scenes. It is probably all of the above and then some. I lost interest in the game relatively early on, and have not looked back. Overall, I found it to be a very blah game that did nothing to make me want to save the kingdom or even care if it was destroyed.