Crazy Cows

The final word on Crazy Cows? If you're a fan of Risk, this game is a must. It takes the basics of Risk and goes absolutely wild with them, adding in features that I myself am more used to seeing in places like Lords of Magic and Starcraft!
I downloaded this game yesterday sheerly for the name itself. Come on, doesn't that just make YOU want to play it on it's own? I've spent a worrying amount of time on it since then, and considering how little (see the word 'little', read the word 'nothing'!) I knew about the game beforehand, it really is decent! It's a not-so-cleverly disguised shout out to Risk.

You have 'MUs' which are your turns, or armies, attacks, moves, etc left available. In this way, it is set up like Lords of Magic eventually was, in that you only have a short amount of activity room to do what it is you want to do before you have to hit the little red X by your cow army's status meter and give the enemy cows their turn. Also like Lords of Magic, you can only see the parts of your map or game board that you have either already been to, or that you have your troops currently on. This means covert attacks from both sides will need to be considered carefully!
As should be obvious, this game was meant to play on a much slower system, so when the enemy takes their turn, there's a few frenzied moments of blurry pixels, and then a sudden snap back into the reality of "Hey, wait, did they just kill my second bazooka holder?" Because, yes, that's right, you have cows that hold bazookas. Not only that, the designers set it up in an almost chess-like way. There's a king, or rather, a cow General, cow assassins, even a cow navy, who look hilarious in scuba suits!
The biggest thing this game lacks is instructions. Of any kind. Even the buttons don't say what they do; it's all guesswork from the pictures and the reactions! The two best pieces of advice I can give to get you started on this unbelievably addictive game is that the red X near the right side of the screen is to end your turn when you run out of MUs, and cows are not one shot kills. Each cow has hit points, range of attack, and different abilities. And you just thought they stood there all day!
(Also, when you hit the main loading screen, it automatically goes to scenes of various levels of gameplay. And no, don't worry, the game's not broken, it just doesn't actually tell you how to do much of anything. Yay, learning as you go! This game is mouse-based, so you'll need to hold down the left-click button on your mouse, and only let it go when you're over the menu selection you want.)