I had this vision of myself mocking and joking about Farming Simulator and then playing it and becoming completely addicted to it. Farming Simulator is a brave release in the age of FPS’s and high budget set pieces intentionally swapping excitement for what could certainly be viewed as boredom.
Your task is simple. You have a farm, some (very) basic equipment and a chunky loan to repay. The one and only task in Farming Simulator is to make money. To do so you first prepare a field for a crop, sew whatever seeds you want and then harvest and sell the goods. Eventually you’ll have enough extra cash to afford better machinery which will in turn allow you to harvest a crop more efficiently.
There are five different places to sell your hard earned crops and each will offer slightly different prices for each crop. So it’s up to you to figure out where to sell your crop to maximize profits. At the start of the game there are three different crops available; wheat, barley and canola. If you progress far enough you will be able to purchase equipment to grow sugar or potatoes. There is an overwhelming sense that farming equipment doesn’t come cheap.
From what little I know about farming in the real world this isn’t inaccurate at all, but be prepared to grind. The core gameplay basically comes down to repeating the same tasks repeatedly to earn money and hopefully purchase some better stuff to then repeat the tasks more efficiently. It takes a huge amount of time to progress noticeably but for some reason there is something that kept me coming back for more.
Or at least for a while. As you gain larger fields and better vehicles the money you yield from a harvest increases and in turn you can afford even better things. Eventually though, despite all the vehicles, the arduous sense of progression and the repetitive nature of your life as a farmer starts to become too much. Eventually there will be nothing you need and nothing you even want and at that point the only appeal of Farming Simulator is its gameplay which will probably not be enough to hold interest on its own.
But it will take a long time to own everything Farming Simulator has to offer. There is an impressively huge amount of vehicles to buy. Unless you have a moderate knowledge of farming equipment everything you can imagine, plus some stuff you probably can’t, is available to own and operate. All the vehicles are highly detailed and look good from a distance but look too closely and you will see some pretty shoddy textures at work.
Unfortunately reasonable visuals stop at the farming equipment show floor. Draw distances are an absolute joke and even small fields regularly go from invisible to a patchwork of smooth brown “dirt” squares that are nothing more than blocks of colour. Only when you get very close can you actually see what’s what. Other than the average looking vehicles the only word that can do justice to Farming Simulator’s visuals is ugly.
Joining the basic visuals are the game’s sound and physics. If a tractor comes into contact with a very small hay bale it will likely do a wheelie before the bale gets jammed underneath and the whole situation gets very ridiculous very quickly. Most of the time you will be driving slowly across a field so there won’t be a problem. Although one of my fields has a problem where my trailer for sewing seeds goes haywire every time I drive over a certain patch.
My initial suspicions where at least partially correct. The sound effects are monotonous, the visuals uninspired, the physics engine ridiculous but still I have played Farming Simulator for a very “healthy” amount of time. The desire to progress, earn your fortune and get hold of some of the best equipment available is all there is to keep you coming back – but sometimes that’s enough. The open style and complete freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want is liberating. For me Farming Simulator’s biggest appeal by far is the impressive roster of vehicles, which is what kept me going back.
But eventually the repetitive nature of Farming Simulator might just become too much to handle. There where times early game when I was earning so little and everything was so expensive that I nearly gave up. If you push through the goals get more interesting but the processes remain the same. Grow, harvest, sell, buy. There’s definitely an appeal to Farming Simulator’s slow paced, methodical gameplay. The question isn’t how much there is to do but how much you want to do it. If it doesn’t sound like your cup of tea then it probably isn’t, but I’m glad I gave it a go. If you get the opportunity Farming Simulator’s at least worth a try.
