My Horse & Me 2

Riding games are a popular genre. Everyone from young girls who dream of owning a horse of their own to older people who still secretly hold that dream. My Horse & Me 2 allows you to fulfill that dream by playing the owner of a horse you can care for and ride. While this sounds wonderful in principle, it’s clear this was a budget game with little to no thought in it.

Poor graphics

It’s hard to describe just how bad these graphics are. The logs your horse jumps over look like they are badly cropped from a photo and pasted over the 3d background. The faces of the characters look odd, and it’s clear the only time spent anywhere is on the horses.

This is especially shoddy when you compare it to games like Mary King’s Riding Star, which came out in 1999. Despite being well over a decade older, the graphics in that game are visibly superior, as well as pretty much everything else in the game.

So-so storyline

To its credit, My Horse & Me 2 does have a somewhat developed storyline. In the game, you move to your Uncle’s farm with the task of restoring it. The only way to do this is to become a champion jockey and use your prize money to fix it up. This is a sweet story appropriate for the age range this is probably meant for—perhaps 7-8 year olds. Unfortunately, even a 7 year old would get bored of the content relatively quickly.

Not much to do

The game gives you some basic care chores for horses, such as grooming, and allows you to ride your horse on various challenge levels. On the easiest level, the horse even jumps for you. All you have to do is point the horse in the correct direction.

The game is also fairly repetitive, with nothing surprising or engaging to keep things going. It’s an endless cycle of caring for your horses and then taking them out on similar courses to do similar jumps only to go back and repeat again. While this is essentially horse care in real life too, there’s plenty of ways to make it more enjoyable. More challenging courses, different aspects of horse care, or the actual need for skill could have improved this game.

Decent achievements

If gathering achievements is your only gaming goal you’ll be delighted by the plentiful achievements available in the game. Nearly everything gives you an achievement, and the game is so quick to get through, you can get all of them with just two playthroughs.

This isn’t the worst riding game that has ever been created, but it’s not the best. The game gets through the storyline relatively quickly and is child friendly. If you’re an adult or not completely horse obsessed, you’ll probably get bored of this game very quickly.

Pros:

• Kid friendly game
• Has a storyline

Cons:

• Poor graphics
• Repetitive content