Farming Simulator 15 Review - Life On The  Farm
Written by Martin McCurdie
Editing and Images by Kent Hammer

I have never understood the appeal of these simulator games simulating mundane jobs and repetitive tasks.  Gaming for me is about escapism.  In a nutshell doing things that are either too expensive, too dangerous or for some other reason that I am physically unable to do in real life but excite and interest me.  I have no desire to work on a farm thus I have never played a Farming Simulator game before.  The series from Giants Software seems to be very popular as there is a new one every 2 years and they often do reasonably well in the charts.  Sow with an open mind and feeling optimistic I shall plough on (ahem).

First impressions are very good the game opens with a cinematic with lovely scenery, various farming vehicles and animals going about and some cheerful catchy theme music.  Presentation of the main menu is very nice and easy to understand.

On selecting career I am given the choice of 2 locations to start my virtual farming career, Bjornholm in Scandinavia or West Burroughs Hills in America.  I opt for the more interesting Scandinavian one as there are enough games set in America so it seems like a nice change of setting.  Once the game starts I am offered a guided tour of the basic controls though returning fans who are up to speed on how things work can choose to skip this step if they want.  Instructions are given by a series of text messages displayed at the bottom of the screen explaining how to operate each vehicle or piece of equipment and what they do the first time you use them and there are various question marks dotted around the environment explaining how it all works so it is fairly simple to get to grips with.


You start with 3 fields to harvest crops from, a combine harvester, 3 tractors, a trailer for collecting crops, a cultivater for ploughing your fields ready for seeds to be sown, and a seeder for planting new seeds.  The tutorial walks you through how to do each of these tasks once then leaves you to do it yourself.  Cultivate your fields, plant new seeds, wait for crops to grow then harvest them, pipe them into your trailer and take them over to the farm house empty them into a grate in the ground and they are sold earning you in game money to purchase new equipment, vehicles, livestock and more land to grow your farming empire with.

Doing so is a very long and slow process although you can hire AI workers to do the work for you, the AI is not very reliable and often gets stuck on objects in the environment or just stops working at random so you have to keep a constant eye on them and start them up again every so often.  You can speed up the passage of time and rate that your crops grow to speed up the process but this doesn't speed up AI workers cultivating, planting or harvesting so you have to do all of this in real time then you can speed it up so new crops grow in quicker and you can repeat the process.

Once you've earned enough money the shop has a huge range of different vehicles and equipment from tractors, combine harvesters, spreaders to spread manure so crops will grow faster, feeding equipment for livestock, ploughs to extend or join your fields together and lots more with officially licensed brands that will please farming enthusiasts like New Holland and John Deer.  I was quite disappointed the only animals in the game are cows, sheep and chickens.  No pigs, ducks,horses or other farmyard animals makes it seem a little sparse.  The main draw here is being able to drive and operate a  plethora of different farming vehicles and equipment and there is certainly enough here to keep the budding enthusiast busy for a long long time.  There is new woodcutting vehicles and machinery, which is new to the series, from chainsaws to colossal logging vehicles which provides a new way if earning money as well as a bit of variety in gameplay.  Though personally I would have liked to see more animals in the game.

The graphics are very good, vehicle models all look very realistic and even have a fairly detailed cabin view with all the levers and instruments you would expect and working mirrors.  The physics and handling of the vehicles feel very realistic.  The scenery is very pleasant to admire as you are driving around doing your farming, with ambient sounds like birds chirping, cows, sheep and chickens once bought from the in game shop can be heard off in the distance, cars driving about on the roads and pedestrians going about all adds up to create a very good sense of place.

Multiplayer, another new addition to the series, as stated above allows up to 16 players to work together on all of the above tasks so if you have a few friends who also enjoy a spot of virtual farming you can play together and talk over headsets to organise who does what is certainly a more involving and fun way to play the game.  There is no local multiplayer though only online which is a shame as it would have been a fun addition for 2 people sat on the same couch to play together.



Overall Farming Simulator 15 hasn't really changed my outlook on this type if game and it is still not something that I personally would buy.  The mundane tasks of ploughing fields and growing crops and even the new woodcutting features are too repetitive for my tastes.  That being said it is very well made, with good graphics, nice scenery, excellent vehicle physics that look and feel very realistic, nice ambient sounds and a wide variety of different farming equipment and vehicles here to give fans plenty to keep them busy.  Disappointingly few animals though what is there are very well  animated and very realistic in their behaviour.  Still I found myself wanting more and so will a lot of people expecting to see a wide variety of animals as well as 20 odd different tractors.

7/10



Version Tested: Xbox One
Other Versions Available: PS4, PS3, 360 & PC
Developer: Giants Software
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Release Date: 19/5/15