Bone: The Great Cow Race. Soak the name in for a moment. Pretty interesting sounding, isn't it? Turns out the game fits the name appropriately. This second installment picks up right where the first game left off. Fone Bone and his two cousins, Phoney and Smiley, have happened upon a valley where some (to them) strange looking folks live. Fone is smitten by the young Thorn and is staying with her at her Gran'ma Ben's house. Phoney is staying with them as well, and Fone and Phoney are looking for their cousin Smiley, who has gotten separated from them.

As the game begins, Phoney has gone into town and met up with Smiley. Now that Smiley is found, Phoney can get back to the business of being Phoney, and comes up with a plan to cash in with the Great Cow Race. Gran'Ma Ben runs with the cows - yes, she's not a cow - and she wins every year. Phoney's plan involves getting everyone to bet on the 'Mystery Cow', who is actually the lovable Smiley, and everyone losing their wagers when Gran'Ma Ben wins the race. At the same time Phoney is busy with his scheme, the story also focuses on Fone (who is quite obsessed with Moby Dick) and Thorn and their budding wow powerleveling relationship.

During The Great Cow Race, players will find themselves controlling each of the Bone characters. Working together, often without knowing it, they manage to complete every task set before them. In addition to the standard inventory puzzles (I found an object, now what do I do with it?), there are some traditional puzzle games put into a non-traditional setting. For example, one puzzle is the disappearing tile game. In this puzzle, players must erase certain tiles, knowing full well that some tiles will be added shortly after. The puzzle must be solved by erasing all the tiles before new ones are added, which means a little strategic wow powerleveling thinking as to which ones to erase. The twist on this is that Phoney is mopping the floor (erasing the tiles) and people are stepping on the floor (adding tiles) to muddy it up again. I thought this was an ingenious way to implement a pretty standard puzzle.

The dialog is well written and all spoken. There are chat trees, but no choices block anything, so it's more for show than any challenge. There will usually be one option that opens up whatever is needed from that character, but going through the others doesn't affect anything and is quite often humorous.

One trend I'm noticing lately in point-and-click titles that I absolutely, positively love (listen up potential developers) is built-in hint systems. Bone has one as well. It doesn't punish you in any way if you get stuck and need a hint. It also doesn't give you the answer right away. It takes you through a series of screens, each one giving a little more help as to what the solution might be. It's fantastically executed in Bone and I want wow gold every point-and-click game from this point forward to have this feature.

The game controls are well done. Point, click. Hard to mess that one up. The camera angles at times can be odd, but nothing that really causes any problems with the game. What I did find semi-annoying was the slow movement of the Bones. However, this is mitigated by the fact that they never have long distances to travel. Transitions from one location to another are unhurried as well. The environments are generally wow gold small and it is a linear game, so there is no getting lost or having to backtrack situations. That does bring up a point, though. Everything about this game feels small. It is very short, with a 5-7 hours tops completion time if you are real slow about it. There are in reality only 2 locations, the bar and the carnival. Each location has a handful of screens to explore. There aren't very many puzzles, either.