A farmer’s beloved cow has been abducted by aliens, and so the farmer arms himself with his trusty plunger, disguises himself as a steer, and gets captured himself to save his livestock from evil Mootants.  Space Cows is a twin stick shooter with plenty of bovine humor, milk puns, and fart jokes.  It’s available to download on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

Even though your viewpoint is like a 2-D sidescroller instead of overhead like most twin stick shooters, the basic controls remain the same.  Move in any direction with the L analog stick and aim with the right one.  Fire plungers by hitting the Z trigger button repeatedly.  Press either shoulder button or the Y button to fart, which acts as a dash move to help you move quickly and avoid obstacles like lasers.  Use the B button to move objects like haystacks out of the way.  You can also pick up cows this way, too.  If you carry them to a certain machine, you can play a milking mini game.  A full carton of milk will refill one of your health points, and droplets of milk will contribute to a special rage meter.  When it is full, you can press the X button for temporary rapid fire.

Some of the graphical detail in the game is kind of neat.  Like when you enter a room that locks behind you, they just unfold one of those ‘caution wet floor’ signs to block the way.  And the third grade humor is charming in a sort of early to mid 90’s Boogerman kind of way.  But what I didn’t like about the game was some of the play control choices.  Why must you press a button repeatedly to fire your weapon?  Why not just be able to hold it down, or better yet, just fire by holding the R stick in a direction.  It’s not like you’re having to conserve ammo or anything.  It may just be a personal preference, but I don’t really like games that fiddle with the controls to make things more difficult.  Because of this, I found the easiest difficulty setting extremely challenging.  I can only recommend this one to die-hard twin stick shooter experts.

Kid Factor:

Space Cows is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence, Sexual Themes, and Blood.  Plenty of fart jokes and noises, and I guess the sexual themes come from the udder jokes, maybe?  Defeated enemies splat all over with green goo, and when you are defeated, a bit of red color explodes outward like blood.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, and younger gamers may find the game too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews