Download.it search icon
Advertisement

Start a realistic farm in the United States or Sweden and build a successful business

Start a realistic farm in the United States or Sweden and build a successful business

Vote: (250 votes)

Program license: Paid

Developer: GIANTS Software

Works under: Windows

Also available for Mac

Vote:

Program license

(250 votes)

Paid

Developer

GIANTS Software

Works under:

Also available for

Windows

Mac

Pros

  • Lovingly detailed recreations of popular farming equipment
  • Settings that are sometimes very pretty close up
  • Meticulous commitment to the art of farming

Cons

  • Very sub-par physics and collision detection
  • Terrible performance and draw distance

Farming Simulator 15 is the latest in a series of games that puts you behind the wheel of a tractor and asks you to keep a modern farm operating at peak capacity. Unfortunately, the ambitions of the game come in conflict with the budget and skills of its development team, and it can be pretty rocky in places. When you really break it down, there isn't a lot of management at play here, but it can be soothing in its monotony, a sort of exercise in repetitive tasks that don't really come together as a cohesive whole.

Series like Harvest Moon prove that the redundant activities of the farm life can be a joy. These games essentially become time management sims, asking you to juggle an increasingly complex network of activities in a limited amount of time, and there's a tangible sense of accomplishment as your farm grows and your profits soar under your watchful eye. There's little of that in Farming Simulator 15. You spend most of your time behind the wheels of a tractor, harvesting large fields of wheat for profit. The tractors look good. The developers have drawn from real manufacturers and designs to create a loving and authentic recreation of this equipment that anyone who loves such things should truly appreciate, but the physics aren't really up to the task of portraying what it's really like to drive them. They're loose and inconsistent, regularly bouncing and careening off seemingly inconsequential objects and throwing you directly off your course. In a game where much of the joy comes from driving in straight lines and keeping your crops evenly tended to, this is a pretty major issue. There's a lot of farm equipment to unlock as well, and getting your hands on the next piece of equipment is one of the greatest joys in the game.

Unfortunately, despite the great care taken to portraying accurate designs with the equipment, the setting itself can be pretty underwhelming. The graphics are bland and lifeless, and the humans have a tendency to resemble aimless and shambling automatons. While the setting itself evokes miles and miles of golden fields extending endlessly into the horizon, the draw distance isn't up to the task of accommodating this look, and the result is a horizon that's choppy and often limited to your immediate vicinity.

That being said, their commitment to replicating the real experience of a farmer is admirable. Everything you'd expect to have to do as a farmer is here, from plowing to seeding to harvesting, and you aren't allowed to cut any corners. There's little in the way of automation, and if you're looking to learn what it's really like to live the life of a farmer, you get the experience here. If there's a major problem with the game play loops, it's that all of these tasks largely feel the same. The joy you're likely to get out of Farming Simulator 15 will likely be directly proportional to how fascinating you find the actual act of farming.

Pros

  • Lovingly detailed recreations of popular farming equipment
  • Settings that are sometimes very pretty close up
  • Meticulous commitment to the art of farming

Cons

  • Very sub-par physics and collision detection
  • Terrible performance and draw distance