Most casual gamers don't even know who Core Design is, but just about everyone who's had any contact with games in the past couple years knows their biggest work to date and her generous… talent. Yes, Core is the developer behind all the Tomb Raider games that had an unquestionable key role in thrusting video games into the mainstream limelight. However, beyond Lara Croft's adventures, Core has hit on little in the way of bankable franchises. There were attempts at different genres with games like Fighting Force, and more recently PS2 games like Project Eden and Thunderstrike: Operation Phoenix. Those games, as much as they tried, however, never really had that intangible something that hooks you. Luckily, their latest and arguably most ambitious effort, Herdy Gerdy, does.

We recently got a chance to sit down and play around with near-final code of Herdy Gerdy, and despite being sketchy on framerate, the rest of the game is absolutely, positively incredible. Herdy Gerdy is a painting brought to life. It oozes with personality, from the way cows lazily chew their cud to the way the adorable Doops bound across the lush, rolling hills playfully. The environments that make up Gerdy's world are teeming with life, exploding with little touches. Butterflies flit about in unpredictable arcs and dips, woodpeckers knock against trees with rapid-fire staccato accents and everywhere you look, there's movement. Particles gently rise from light yellow-green patches of grass, sun bathes stone, dirt and trees alike in soft blankets of light. The attention to detail is simply stunning, and blurs the line between art and videogames into near obscurity. It is no understatement to say Herdy Gerdy is one of the finest examples of art direction and execution ever seen on any platform to date.

What's even more stunning about all this detail is how all the levels simply overflow with it. All of the touches I mentioned are from the first couple minutes and areas of the game (hey, we have to save something for the review). The engine works just as well for cinematics, too, pulling in close to show off the Disney-quality expressions and reactions from all the characters. It's nearly impossible to describe just how amazing the animations and direction of the cinemas are in the space allowed here. If you've played Jak & Daxter, imagine that kind of animated detail, but glossed over with a more pastel, painted look. Subtle tweaks like crooked, snaggletoothed floorboards; earthen, bulbous walls; and irregular organic objects punctuate different buildings, each lavishly slathered with detailed textures show that Core worked incredibly hard to keep anything from looking like it belonged in a traditional video game.

And really, Herdy Gerdy is at its core a very simple game, culling its gameplay hook from puzzler classics like Lemmings. As the name implies, Herdy Gerdy entrusts you with the task of shepherding (hence the Herdy) the various creatures that populate Gerdy's world. Because of varying personalities and intelligence, it's important that you balance your ability to corral and lead with the various environmental roadblocks. But perhaps I'm getting head of myself. See, Gerdy's dad is a herder, and a good one at that, but he's been cursed to sleep until someone can defeat the man who placed the spell on him in competition, and since Gerdy is the most fit and malleable youth around, he quickly gets a crash course in learning to fill his dad's shoes. It's your job to learn the ins and outs of herding the creatures in preparation for the big showdown with your as-yet unseen nemesis.

Herdy Gerdy does pay a price for all the looks in the way of a spastic framerate, as I mentioned earlier, but it's understandable with the amount of detail that's thrown at you. Luckily, it never really interferes too much with the gameplay, but we'll have to reserve passing judgment on the game as a whole until we can spend a good couple days exploring the game proper. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, though, Herdy Gerdy has a style and presentation that's unmatched on the PS2. It's not quite as in-your-face as some of the other games, but in much the same way Ico wowed with its simplistic-yet-ornate approach to presenting everything, Herdy Gerdy will bowl you over with the picture book-style looks and endearing characters. We'll have a full review when the game hits shelves in just a few more days.