Whether you like FarmVille or not, whether you are a level 70 or just starting out, one thing is for sure, you've seen all your friends posting stuff about their farms on their Facebook pages. What makes FarmVille so special? Why is it such an addictive social game? Let's take a look at the different aspects of FarmVille to see where it shines and where it could use some polishing.

Goal: Every social game has to have a goal right? FarmVille has several goals that you'll try to accomplish in the game. The main goal being to level your farm up to 70. From there, there are many other smaller goals that you'll accomplish along the way: such as mastering each type of crop you can plant, gathering up all of the different ribbons (such as for buying items or for visiting neighbors), and gathering up all of the special items in the game. There is actually so much to the game that you'll try to accomplish that it can be a bit overwhelming at first.

Game Play: It sounds like a simple concept overall: plow, plant, harvest. What more is there to farm games right? Well it turns out that FarmVille is much more in-depth than just those three things. While you do have to start out plowing, planting, and harvesting to get some coins and experience, you will move into raising animals, harvesting trees, and using decorations and special items to help build a beautiful farm and level up. With 70 levels, it will take you a while to get to the top, but it can be done. And, with such a wide range of different crops, animals, and trees, any farmer can easily create the farm of their dreams without ever getting dirty. At first, you might think that the game play in FarmVille is something you won't like. But, if you keep playing a little bit every day, by the time that you reach level 10, you'll find that the game gets a thousand times more interesting. So, this simple, yet addictive game play in this Facebook game gets a solid 9 out of 10. The only thing you might wish for is that there were easier ways to build up some coins in the lower levels to help you out more.

Graphics: Are they any good? Are they too cartoonish? Well, for any fan of the Zynga games on Facebook, you can expect the same overall graphics that their other games, (such as YoVille), hold. If you aren't familiar with them, they are pretty well done. While the characters, animals, houses, and buildings are cartoonish, they do have a feel of realism to them as well. This is because the detail is great on everything in the game. but not so much that it can make it seem less like a game at times (such as in FarmTown). The crops you plant have a realistic look to them - even if they are in a computer game. The animals have a great amount of detail to them, and even move and eat like real animals. The buildings, the flowers, the trees, you name it - everything has a very good amount of detail to it. For most gamers, this is part of what makes a great game because you want to see what you're doing, what your building, and so forth. It is obvious that the developers took the time to make that much detail in every little thing So when it comes to the graphics in FarmVille, it once again gets a 9 out of 10.

Sound: Sounds and audio are another factor that a game is always rated on, and FarmVille has it's fair share of both. Let's start with the music: it's cute, little "farmish" music that you would expect on a child's game - not really something that you would expect for adults all over the world. You might find that you won't turn on the music much here. Now, the audio sounds are a bit funny at times, but once again, they get really annoying after about 30 seconds. So for the most part, the sounds and audio of FarmVille get pretty low marks, but this is really a social game and not one built on it's sounds. This area of FarmVille only gets a 2 out of 10.

Special Items: What Facebook game would be complete with out special extras, and FarmVille has a ton of them. During the past year, they have picked up a hundred times what they were, with special items and fun things to do for any holiday. For example, at Christmas, everyone got a free Christmas tree and was able to send and receive free presents to their friends and neighbors. Each of these presents could be opened and you could have gotten just about anything out of them - from animals to decorations to buildings. On St. Patrick's Day, everyone got a pot of gold and you could send and receive different types of gold from friends and neighbors. Once you collected enough gold, you could trade them in for different specialty items, such as a green shamrock sheep, the Shamrock Castle, and so forth. There are also special collections that you can complete as you do your normal game play, such as collecting different butterflies and bugs, kitchen items, and so on. You can also give special items to friends that you find on your farm as you're harvesting, such as pink cows. There is really no end to the specialty items that FarmVille offers it's gamers. For this part of FarmVille, it gets a solid 10 out of 10 - everyone loves this part of FarmVille and strives to collect everything they possibly can.

Overall, it's pretty easy to see why FarmVille is so addictive to so many people. It's all about being in a social game where you do have to interact with your neighbors to get ahead. You can control how much interaction you do with other gamers, from how many bonuses you put out to how often you visit your neighbor's farms to help out. FarmVille gets a solid rating of 9 out of 10, which far exceeds other farm games out there, especially on Facebook. If you are looking to try out some of the Facebook games out there, I would recommend that you give FarmVille a try. And, with the hundreds of thousands of FarmVille players out there, you'll have no shortage of neighbors and gifts if you simply put a bit of time into it.