Release Date: 25/10/2016
Played On: Win
Available On: Mac / PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 228h
Progress: 100% Complete on both core maps (still farming)
Developer: Giants Software
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
As I write this, it feels like every second game that gets released on Steam is some form of survival game. The flavour of the year is battle royale, or at least early access open world games where you need to keep track of a hunger stat or something. Before that it was exclusively zombie games, and before that the dreaded simulator.
There's a simulator game for everything banal and mundane in the world, from driving trucks and buses, to mining and emergency services. It's hard to pinpoint the start of the simulator's popularity, but there are some early examples of popular sims like Train Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator, that might have something to do with it.
The difference is that those are actually well made games that offer a level of quality missing from most of the others available today. In fact the only other simulator I can think of that holds up along with the two I mentioned, is the Farming Simulator series.
I've played the Farming Simulator games since the 2013 version and have often wondered what I enjoy so much about them. There's no doubt that they're the best of their kind when compared to similar games like Agricultural Simulator (which I tried to play, but didn't enjoy at all), but there's enough "game" in the simulation to make it a bad sim, but an enjoyable experience.
Over the years I've racked up hundreds of hours in various editions of the Farming Simulator series, but it's down to one single reason: these are games that can be ignored as much as they can be played.
For a while I got into a routine at the end of the day where I'd finish working and fire up some YouTube videos or a movie to relax a little. Rather than just sitting and passively watching something, I prefer to have something to do at the same time, but nothing that will require too much attention and distract from whatever I'm watching. Turns out that once you've established yourself in Farming Simulator, it's a game that requires input, but can largely be ignored as it functions.
So it quickly became the game that I'd fire up while I watched something on my other monitors. There's little about Farming Simulator that demands any kind of moment to moment attention, so it's a perfect excuse to hold a gamepad in your hands and occasionally glance at while doing something else.
Now, you might be reading this perspective and thinking that it sounds like the dullest experience in the world. In a lot of ways you'd be right, but I suppose that's all I ever wanted Farming Simulator to be. A lot of people might play clickers in the same way, but I prefer to work on a farm and use all the different machinery to make it happen. These are games that only give you as much as you are willing to get out of them.
It all depends on the settings you choose that control everything about the farm. Crops can grow at different speeds and decay, or not, depending on how you want to play. In fact everything can be tweaked to provide you with the challenge (or lack thereof) you're looking for.
I often make life easy for myself and set everything to the most favourable settings. After all, I'm not after a real challenge, more of a distraction. However, it's nice to know that anything's possible and I've had some fun playing around with more difficult challenges here and there. Ultimately though, the Farming Simulator series is one that can be played with very little input from the player. At the same time it's made with enough quality and depth to remain interesting for hundreds of hours.
My typical approach to a new farm is to borrow as much money as I can, and spend it on the equipment I need to start working. I'll plant and harvest a few crops on the starting fields, while doing odd jobs for other farmers working their land for some extra cash. After the initial loan, I won't buy any new equipment at all, instead saving all my money to invest in some real money makers.
In every iteration of the series I've played, money becomes trivial once you have erected a bunch of wind turbines around the farm. They're expensive to buy, but they passively earn a lot of money every day. The effect compounds as you build more turbines, so eventually you're bringing in a million bucks a day without ever having to do anything else. It's a cheesy way to start the game and probably a notable flaw in the economic system, but it takes a long time to save up for the initial turbines, so it's nice to have it pay off eventually.
Without having to worry about money, it's time to buy up all the fields on the map from other farmers and start working the land. I like to designate certain areas to certain crops, which makes sense as equipment can be assigned to the same area as well.
Before too long I have a team of harvesters, cultivators, seeders, and transport vehicles working the harvest and filling up my silos. After breaking the economy, I rarely farm anything manually ever again, instead I hire workers to run the equipment automatically. Then I can just sit back and drive around the trucks dotted around the map to collect the harvest and unload it at the silos.
However, the AI helpers that you hire have had limitations over the series, but have thankfully been improved significantly in Farming Simulator 17. Hiring a worker essentially turns whatever tractor or harvester you're driving into an automated vehicle, so that you can go about other business while a field is worked. It's a great way to harvest multiple fields at once, although it also costs money to have workers on the payroll, which isn't really an issue once the economy is broken with wind turbines.
In previous version of the game, the worker AI was extremely limited and they would only be able to navigate a basic rectangular field. As soon as any edge of the field was at an angle, the worker would have no idea how to navigate the field and would stop in their tracks. Thankfully this has been improved in Farming Simulator 17, but there are still some places that stump the limited AI of the workers, so there's work yet to be done.
The main improvement is for workers navigating an angled or oddly shaped field. They still function best when working strictly rectangular shapes, but so long as the angle isn't too severe, they will manage to work an angled field adequately.
This might not sound like much of an improvement, but it changes the way that you play the game from the start. Rather than ploughing fields to right angles, you can follow the curve of the land a bit better and end up with some more natural looking shapes.
One thing I love doing is chopping down all the trees between a set of fields and ploughing the land between existing plots to join them all up and make some ginormous fields. Often this also means getting creative about how they connect and would previously require straight edges that now have a little bit of give to them.
Although, there still seems to be a point where the angle gets too steep and the AI gets confused once again. Unfortunately we're not able to make completely realistic field shapes yet; at least not if you're a farmer who hires dumb AI to harvest your crops all the time.
One of the biggest changes in Farming Simulator 17 is actually a negative, as for some reason they decided to complicate the work flow of root crops like potatoes and beets. Typically these crops require specialised equipment to harvest and plant, as well as specialist storage as they can't be dumped into silos like the other grains.
Ordinarily, you'd have a shed on your farm where you could back up a load and dump potatoes on the ground. When it came time to sell them, you'd head round the back and there'd be a conveyer ready to load the potatoes into a trailer. It was a simple system that worked as easily as silos, but for some reason the developers decided to mess with it and ruin everything.
I think they were trying to make it more realistic and complex, by adding in the ability to store root crops anywhere and use your own conveyer belt setups for loading. It's a nice theory as it means that you're not tied to a single storage location that could potentially be far away from where you're harvesting these crops, but in practice it's untenable.
The old system meant that whatever was dumped in storage, would be loaded when you're ready to load. Now each pile of root crops requires a conveyer system to be set up close to each pile, and then moved to properly load all the veggies in storage. Although, all the grain crops still use silos for storage, so no matter what you do you need to deposit them at a certain spot, and load them from a certain spot. There's no options available and there doesn't need to be, so it's hard to know why they decided to change root crops in this version of the game.
Another major change for the series is that one of the maps now has trains that can be used to transport harvests around the map. Essentially there are two train lines that act as places to sell crops and little else. The novelty soon wears off after you shoot around the map a few times at top speed, but it's a nice little addition that doesn't seem out of place.
Most of the game remains the same though, as all the staples are still there. All the equipment is based on real life machinery and brands, which is nice, but I only ever end up using the same equipment everywhere. There are some customisation options for certain machinery, like paint colour, tire setup, or engine power, but ultimately you end up finding a tractor you like and buying loads of them to do all the work.
I've never spent much time focusing on rearing animals in Farming Simulator games, but it can be quite involved. Basically there are different ways that you can care for your animals that will affect how productive they are and how much money you can make. Of course, it all boils down to how much effort are you willing to put in, which is why I never delved into mixing chaffe and silage to make feed. I'm not even sure if that's what you mix to make feed, but I've glanced at a couple of wiki pages that explain it enough to know I'm not all that interested.
As far as simulators go, Farming Simulator is a well-made series that at least tries to provide a deep experience. There's lots to keep you occupied between harvesting crops, forestry, and rearing animals. Quite famously, its physics are a little lacking and sometimes you'll wonder how you flipped your tractor so suddenly, but you're able to reset equipment easily, so you're never stuck for long.
Each map is varied and interesting enough to make getting to know the lay of the land enjoyable and satisfying. It would be nice if the people in the towns were more than just phantoms walking around, but it's nice that each location isn't completely void of life.
I hope they continue to iterate and improve on the series with each new version, as some improved AI and more streamlined root crop storage would be a welcomed fix. Despite its flaws though, Farming Simulator 17 is the best version in a series of well-made simulators.
There are a lot of terrible simulators out in the world, so it's nice to find one that's competent and does its job well. I'm assuming that it won't be for everyone, but if you're the kind of gamer who likes tuning out with a podcast every now and then, this might be a good one to unwind with and pass the time.