[LTTP Review] Farming Simulator 2013

Farming Simulator 2013 on the outside seems like it’s a boring tractor ride-a-long and it kinda is just that. Yet, as I played it for this review, I quickly found myself 12 hours later in the day still playing without a break. I’ve had the game for weeks now and just haven’t been able to put it down long enough to actually write this review. What crazy magic does Farming Simulator 2013 have in it that makes me push everything off my plate to continue to play?

Lets get this out of the way first… You absolutely will spend the first hour or 2 into Farming Simulator 2013 just crashing tractors into things. Into buildings, into other tractors, trying to run over pedestrians and cars. If you don’t do this almost immediately upon starting the game then you aren’t human and we can’t be friends anymore. Anyway, it’s on your second start that you finally get down to the business of farming.

You start off at your farm house in rural Germany. You have a few small tractors that look like they are from the 50′s and a few other machines that each have their own purpose in preparing the land or crops. You’ll have to till the land, plant the seeds, fertilize the ground and wait. A nice little feature the game has is the ability to speed up the clock, though that will mess with you later on as some rows of crops are ready to harvest way earlier than your other rows as you speed and slow down the clock to take care of other needs. After the crops sprout and are ready for harvesting, you have to take your combine and begin to chop them down.

Honestly, that really is just about it for Farming Simulator 2013. Farming isn’t really that complex of a thing. Wait, what? That didn’t do it for you? Oh fine, I’ll tell you how the game is so damn addictive.

Just like other simulation style games like The Sims, Theme Park Tycoon, etc. you have a certain repetitive task to reach a goal. In Farming Simulator 2013, the main goal is to get more money. Now the only real way of doing this is through planting and harvesting crops. After the first few yields, you’ll hunger for more land. After you get that next large plot of land, you’ll recognize that your machinery is just too small and slow to do the job properly, so you’ll save up to get new things that work better. At the same time, you have little mini goals coming on your screen like needing to cut the grass at a golf course in exchange for $7000. You do it because you need the money like you are addicted to crack, because you essentially are. It’s a cycle that you just won’t be able to stop doing. More money means more land, which means you need better equipment, which means you need more money, which means… I think you get the point.

The game looks pretty OK for a current generation title. The land is quite pretty and the textures are well done for something that is as relatively bland as dirt and grass. The machines are dead on to their real life counterparts and even small things like rust can be spotted on some of the older machines you start with. The view distance is a little crappy and I would have liked to see that be improved since there is so very little going on with the game, but that detracts so very little from the experience, I feel bad for putting it on here. The visuals and the sounds are what you would expect for a farming game, so this won’t win any awards anywhere for excellence in either area, but this game is more about the gameplay anyway.

I would like to see some things implemented like being able to have your newly purchased machines delivered to your land for an additional fee as driving something several miles at 10mph gets really boring. My biggest issue with the game so far is that vehicles and machines get stuck on things far too often. Just driving out of the parking lot can be an adventure in its own right at times and once things are stuck, you are pretty much stuck for life.

Realistically, Farming Simluator 2013 is super addictive to start even if it’s unremarkable. Like most sim games, you’ll play it nearly non-stop for about 100 hours and then never touch it again. There really isn’t any replay value after you get all the machines since the game doesn’t mix it up at all and I haven’t seen any new gameplay content coming out quite yet for it. If you like other sim games and have some extra money from the holidays, then it’s worth picking up. If you are tight on cash or you haven’t played all the games on our top 5 lists from 2012, then hold off on it until it gets cheaper.

Final Breakdown

[+Addictive] [+Mods] [+Ram vehicles together] [-Low replay value] [-Low value at $29.99]