Giants have released the 8th instalment in their Farming Simulator series. However, does it appeal to just simulator gamers or will others give it a go? The developers have given the game a massive improvement in its graphics, but that’s not all we get.
New for this game, there are three different options you can take to start your career as a farmer: New Farmer, you start with land and some machinery; Farm-Manager, you have substantial funds but no land, buildings or equipment and finally Start from Scratch, where you have little funds and don’t own any land or machinery.
With this game Giants have also added a feature so you have to buy land not just fields, and as such you can place down your farm how you want it including all animal pens and farm houses. In addition, you can now buy, breed and sell horses on for money using your horse pen which you from the placeables menu. A new dog kennel has been implemented too and you can feed your dog and have it follow you around your farm. The age-old tradition of cotton picking has too been added to the game just with the modern twist by using machinery, which then pops out a cotton bale which you then pick up with a lorry trailer.
2 new maps are included with Farming Simulator 19, the first being Ravenport, an American map that boasts extensive fields ready for your large equipment. However, the other new map is Felsbrunn, set in Europe with smaller roads and lots more smaller fields than Ravenport – they’re very different and offer different challenges.
Included in the game again is multiplayer where you can play with up to 6 friends on PlayStation. Added into it now is where you can each have your own farm and buy different areas of the map and could perhaps compete to see who could make the most amount of money in a certain amount of time. However, you can also work for the same farm and help out each other if you’d rather be slightly more cooperative in your games.
Once again contracts are in the game but have had a revamp, you can now see all the contracts on the menu instead of having to go to each field, you can lease machinery which will take some money of your final payment however, or you can go ahead and buy and use your own and get the full payment. Once you have harvested the grain you now have to take the product to the selling point. Also, another job you can do is transport pallets from one part of the map to the other side. From now on you can also mow grass and then bale it for people; they’re small things, but add up to make the game feel like a fuller simulator.
As with the last Farming Simulator you can employ a worker to do your jobs for you like cultivating or sewing seeds. This is for if you have more than one job to do you can get both your jobs done. New machinery has been added like John Deere including Harvesters and Tractors, as well as some New Holland Skid Steers and Wheel Loaders. The new User Interface leaves users with a sleek and modern look too without taking too much of the screen up for the player, making the whole experience more enjoyable and straightforward.
Overall then, the game feels smoother with a few tweaks and better graphics that make it more enjoyable to play and easier to interact with, and with the new locations and machines to try out there’s every reason to pick this up.
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