We’re about to embark on an adventure where man and machine are one, so don your denim overalls and don’t forget to grab your straw hat for the ride.
Farming Simulator 2013 blurs the line between reality and video games. While not a true video game as most would expect, Farming Simulator is a real-to-life simulation of managing a farm. You have to work and earn a living; nurture your land; and learn how to survive. Just like everyone today, you start with an enormous amount of debt and a big dream.
You start with very little cash, some harvest leftover in a few silos and a small plot you can farm. And just like running a real business, everything on your farm – from running tractors to using tippers (trailers) for hauling – costs money.
Earning money isn’t as easy as it sounds. You need to spend countless hours prepping a field for harvest before you can even start making any money. This requires turning the top soil by plowing, cultivating the field, and then fertilizing it to help the growth process. Once this has been completed, you will need to spray your fields to help maximize production.
If you start to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work needed to maintain your farm, you can hire work-hands to help assist with your duties. Workers must get paid for their labor, so it’s important to have enough in your payroll before you hire anyone. Sometimes it’s better to do most of the work yourself to save money.
Farming Simulator 2013 is a very realistic simulator. You must purchase other fields/plots to expand your farm. The game will not allow you to farm on property that you do not own.
You can turn any wasted space around your farm into another field to make some extra cash. You’re not restricted to the fields you can buy; you can farm just about every inch of your land. You can also purchase different plots and connect them together to form one massive field. Just because the fields are spaced far apart doesn’t mean they have to stay that way.
Selling things can be a chore at times, but it must be done. Everything you harvest must be transported to the markets for sale. There are multiple resellers that will accept your products. The information you need for pricing and the locations of these resellers are listed in your PDA; this list can be viewed anytime by pressing the “i” key on the keyboard.
You can also sell your equipment by driving your vehicle to the dealership or selling it via the option menu. If you take your vehicle to the dealership, you will receive an additional twenty-percent for taking the time for driving the vehicle in.
During your farming experience, you can purchase livestock such as cows, sheep and chickens. Even though there is a daily cost to maintain livestock, it will pay for itself as your chickens lay eggs, cows produce milk, and wool is taken from sheep.
Your livestock will grant you expensive manure which can be used to fertilize your crops and fields. Feeding your livestock is no easy feat and requires the player to bale hay and produce their own chaff. Special machines can be purchased for this purpose, but they do not come cheap.
Livestock should be something you take on early in Farming Simulator 2013. It’s a lot of work to maintain your animals, but the pay off is worth it in the end. With over a hundred plus pieces of equipment and accessories to purchase, you will be farming in this game for years to come. Including the equipment that already comes with Farming Simulator 2013, there is a section where you can import mods such as Farming Simulator 2011-2012 to access add-ons and vehicles from those games.
This doesn’t include the equipment players are developing everyday. The options available are endless and they will keep simulation gamers busy for a long time. Another feature is to participate in missions. Every so often a requester will appear asking you to help with a small task.
These missions can either pay very well or not so good at all. But the more money the mission offers, the harder the task(s) will be. Most of the time, these missions require you to have a front loader and a pallet fork attachment. Most missions have you moving pallets from one area of the map to the other while being timed. If you run out of time before you complete the assigned task(s), you lose the allotted money for the mission and you’re left with a hefty fuel bill for using your vehicle.
You are not required to participate in any of the missions and there is an option to turn them off. But they are a great way to make some extra money to maintain your farm. The missions can be frustrating at times, but they are worth the effort. Now if only the missions were more farm centric like hauling goods for other farms or placing orders with customers.
You can spend an entire day just tending to your farm. The last time I seeded my field it took me literary hours to accomplish. For gamers with little patience, there is a feature to speed up time and plant growth. I suggest playing the game without using this feature (it robs you of the experience of farming), but it does exist if you can’t wait.
It is possible to play Farming Simulator 2013 in real-time. As you would imagine, this feature takes an entire day of sitting at your computer and translates it into an entire day of farming. This feature is great for slowing down time when you have a huge workload to finish. As you work on your farm, you can access two different maps that show where your equipment is located and how far along your crop growth is.
There is also a color chart that explains the different levels of harvest and when it’s ‘Peek Time’ to harvest your crops. Plus, there is a realistic weather system replete with clouds, rain, and fair weather. There is also a day and night cycle. The look and feel of Farming Simulator 2013 is unmatched. It takes you to a place where you can relax and unwind; it’s very therapeutic to sit down and work on a farm.
There are few simulators available today that deal with farming (aside from UIG’s Agricultural Simulator series). Farming Simulator 2013 is for people looking for the best in simulators. You can even play online with friends and random gamers via Steam.
You will not regret adding Farming Simulator 2013 to your PC software collection; it’s an adventure that cannot be found anywhere else.
James ‘Daripp3r’ Pittaro
Platform: PC
System Requirements:
OS: WINDOWS XP SP3/WINDOWS VISTA SP2/WINDOWS 7
Processor: AMD/INTEL 2.0 GHZ
Memory: 1024 MB RAM
Graphics: 256 MB OF VIDEO MEMORY ATI RADEON X1600/NVIDIA GEFORCE 7600/INTEL HD 2000 OR HIGHER
Hard Drive: 1 GB HD space
Additional: INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED FOR THE GAME ACTIVATION AND THE ONLINE GAME
Developer: Giants Software
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
ESRB: N/A
Price: $29.99
Farming Simulator 2013’s Official Website
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Graphics |  |
| Impressive 3D graphics for a simulator. | |
| Sound | |
| Everything from the animals to the tractors sound realistic. | |
| Gameplay | |
| Engaging chores and missions keep you busy for hours. | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| Farming Simulator 2013 brings unmatched realism to the genre. | |
