The first next-gen agriculture simulator is here…
I had no idea what to expect from a console version of a game like Farming Simulator 15, I had to scratch my head at first as to why it made it onto PS4/X1 in the first place, but then while playing it…it started to make sense. It actually handles impressively well, not only that…but it looks fairly good at the same time.
So what do you do on the farm you ask? Everything you can imagine, growing crops, cutting down trees, harvesting, animal husbandry (cows, chicken and sheep), selling fresh products, investment in new and more powerful vehicles or tools to use, that’s just the start. You can play solo or through 2 player online co-op, which is handy if you really want to rake in the extra cash and keep on top of the farm.
You begin with a small loan, but you can increase it to over 200,000 but in doing so will subtract 1 every second because of the interest. The problem is that you start with the bare minimum to get going, so you either have to keep repeating the same tasks and slowly build up your balance to get new equipment for things like transporting tree logs, or extend the debt to do so and even then it may not be enough.
One good feature is that you can hire workers to do some of the jobs for you while you try and keep on top of things, it does take a bit of pressure off as you try and figure out what to do next to raise the cash. You get two different farming locations to try, one is renovated North American environment while the other is a Nordic environment of hundreds of acres of land. Each area is massive in scale and you have to buy extra acres if you wish to expand the farming operation.
If there’s a complaint to be had, it’s that you are literally thrown in at the deep end. There’s a brief tutorial telling you how to control vehicles and the basics of farming, but after that you are left well and truly alone with no guidance on what is the best course of action to starting raking in the dough. Visually, Farming Simulator 15 is a fairly decent looking game. It runs at a solid framerate and the vehicles and lands are well detailed, the sound effects sound authentic to farm life, so overall a decent presentation.
The Verdict
Farming Simulator 15 isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure. It certainly won’t be for the COD gamer, but for those who love simulation games then this is hard to overlook. It has everything you would expect from a game with the title Farming Simulator, I personally rather enjoyed it even if it doesn’t really do a lot to help you in the beginning, once it opens up it becomes quite difficult to stop farming.