Real life gaming simulators vary from driving games to a variety of life like simulators that can have you dating, building a theme park, or riding your own roller coasters. Developer Giants Software‘s Farming Simulator 15 hopes to appeal to the sim crowd with their latest farming sim. Is the game worth it’s price or should it be buried out back in the pasture?

If you are all about modern crop farming, logging, and animal husbandry, or just have a strong curiosity of these things, you will love the newest in the Farming Simulator series. If you are looking for anything other than that, you will be sorely disappointed. Compared to the previous installations, it has heightened graphics and the addition of a handful of new “industries” to dabble in, like logging. Farming Simulator 15 does a very good job as a simulator, which there aren’t a whole lot of on the PS4 to begin with. The only problem is that the game has almost nothing to keep you interested in continuing the repetition.

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The main problem I had with this game was the fact that there was nothing to guide you in the right direction after a VERY brief tutorial on how to harvest and replant crops. Everything else you were basically forced to just drive your tractor around GTA style and figure out on your own. If you haven’t played any of the previous versions of this game, you will have no clue what to do.

There are so many different options to keep you busy, but they all end up becoming repetitive and monotonous. When it comes to simulators, I think this game got it too right. I feel like I could have been running an actual farm.

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They do give you the option of switching between vehicles and hiring helpers to clear fields for you, but you still have to drive your tractors where they need to be and then unload the combines. Collecting chicken eggs consists of walking around a fence full of chickens and picking up eggs on the ground, then driving for 5 minutes to sell those to someone who buys eggs.

Farming Simulator 15 as a pure simulator does exactly what it says it will do and does it very well. If that is all you are looking for, that is all you will get. Some of the vehicle physics and the jumping make playing this game awkward, but the simulation aspects are fantastic. Some of the options made it seem less monotonous, but in the long run, it was just too convoluted and repetitive unless you really love sim games.

5

Farming Simulator 15 review copy provided by publisher. For more information on scoring, visit our Review Scoring guide here.