The self acclaimed “Greatest Farming Simulation Ever” has recently hit the stores and is appropriately named Farming Simulator. I’m not too sure I can back up this huge claim due to being a newcomer to the ever growing farming simulation genre... nevertheless I will surely find out if it’s worth your time, money and effort. Will it plant the farming seed in my head or will I be looking for the nearest combine harvester to leap into?
As the general theme is farming and I have very little experience in this field I quickly located the Tutorials mode. This covers the processes of plowing, sowing, spraying and harvesting just to name a few steps in getting plants to grow and then harvesting them to sell. It all sounds very technical but the truth is it told me to get into a vehicle, switch it on and drive up and down the field until I had covered it all. This doesn’t bode well if that’s the main gameplay as I spent a large chunk of time completing these tutorials and was thoroughly bored at the repetitive nature already.
Time to see how the Career mode pans out, first you are given a choice of locations between Hagenstedt (a European style area which is ideal for starting out) and Westbridge Hills (a large area in the USA for the more skilled farmers). I went with the former as it gives you a quick tour to get you going and oh my it is a “quick” tour, showing you a couple of vehicles you own and where to cash in on your harvest.
From here it says get on with it, so you own three fields and one of each vehicles needed for basic plowing, sowing and harvesting. What you do next is entirely up to you the game, there’s no real aim except to just go and make money. The worst part is that amongst all the lands in the area it seems to give you three that take an age to travel between. Because of limited resources you have to move vehicles from one field to another in order to maintain them which is tough on the old patience at eight miles an hour.
So it all feels rather linear doing the same motions (up and down fields in different vehicles) to make small change to stick in the bank but I guess everyone starts somewhere. The best part (only fun part) of earning money is spending it and fortunately they’ve included a whole host of items. These range from vehicles like the Krone Big X 1000 Forage Harvester, which we’ve all dreamt of owning, to Greenhouses to grow tomatoes in.
The strangest thing I noticed was that despite being a farmer I didn’t actually have any animals on my farm, they are in the shop though. A large selection featuring chickens, cows and sheep... did I say featuring? I meant that’s the full range on offer. Not sure what I expected really but surely at least a pig. The confusing part here is that if you buy for example a cow, it doesn’t tell you what or in which way to feed them, this game really doesn’t hold your hand for very long and it starts to get lonely.
To be a simulation it must be as close to realistic as possible and whilst in theory I think they have accomplished it I do believe they have forgotten it is a game as well. The fact it takes you through a whole day in around five hours real time and on the default settings it could take over a day for crops to grow it becomes very tedious.
The financial side of maintaining a farm, costs of produce and the process behind making money is realism to a tee (refuelling vehicles at gas pumps is a personal highlight even if you just park up and it magically fills it) but they have let themselves down when it comes to actually doing things. For example the harvesting it looks like someone has drawn the wheat onto the field and as you drive over it someone is rubbing it out with an eraser whilst also missing bits that you clearly drove over.
Graphically it is the poorest I have seen in a long time and I doubt I have seen anything this bad on the current gen. Cars wander around on the roads and you drive over them there’s no damage, buildings look drab and the countryside is bland.
All work and no play comes to mind for Farming Simulator and quite frankly I found myself dozing off to sleep which isn’t recommended when operating heavy machinery, stay safe kids. The foundations on which the game is built are solid but the execution of it is terrible, just give it a miss unless you wish to become a farmer but don’t have the funds and then you can use this game to live your dream (or nightmare in my case). It’s really Baaaaaaad (sorry...)
