Let’s Farm… – Farming Simulator 2013 PSVita

How can it be? my Vita has more or less been switched off for the last few months even though there have been more than enough interesting games released for it in the same time frame and when i get dragged into the addictiveness of the best handheld out there the game i end up playing is nothing other than a casual (note, 3DS/iOS) version of the PS3*/PC version… yes i am baffled too..
So what happened? , well i bought the game ages ago when it was on sale as the idea and concept have always been somewhat interesting to me since it is not a simulator per se and at the same it ain’t a pure breed strategy game either so, all in all, it is just a hybrid of various genre’s and well i tend to buy into interesting concepts even if only to support the developer for trying something out of the norm.
So back when i bought the game i somewhat believed that the game would be pretty shallow and tiny but after a few minutes i got overwhelmed and to be quite frank i lost interest very fast as it all went from “ooh” to what? aaargh, why`? etc.. the training and tutorial were too confusing and limited for me and i had no idea what to do really.. 2 hours later the game was deleted and i thought i would never look into the game ever again….. how wrong i was.
A couple weeks ago a friend of mine wanted to try the new Sly Cooper game on the Vita and we had some fun with it until he wanted to try something else and then i said “what about the farming simulator?” in a sarcastic manner and then he went like.. You HAVE THAT? IT’S ON THE VITA? THAT GAME RULES!, i was pretty sure he was being sarcastic too but i decided to fire it up and see…. he showed me the basics (which ended up being the whole gameplay) and now 43hours later with sowing, harvesting, and trading on my own i have to say that this game is far(m) more than i ever expected it to be.
I have no idea why i got hooked, it is too casual for me, too simplified, too grindy, too pointless but yet i really can’t stop playing it, it’s like narcotics… hell, after 3 hours i had seen it all as the casual version have no windmills and super kick ass tractors etc… is this the reason why i keep playing it? , i mean…is it because it is so simplistic and accessible? I’d say yes as i wanted a game like this to pass time… a grinding game i can play while i am not really playing, it is the perfect game when commuting or when you got 5 minutes of free time or whatever.
So is the game any good?, well not really, bad graphics, bad sound and very low production values but it is just fun to play…easy fun and while you actually drive stuff instead of point and click (strategy style) some of the stuff should have been more automatical as some stuff is just too hard to keep track off at times , like you have 20+ machines to control (note Drive) and remembering if you put seeds in the ground or water etc can be really hard as you have no way of identifying the ground itself before or after these events although if you wait long enough (10+ minutes easily) then the wheat/corn etc should pop up if you remembered to sow the fields… in my log, for instance, i have sowed twice as many times as i have harvested…. AAAAARGH!.

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me ” is that game any good or are you just “Farming trophies” , that was just hilariously funny as yes the trophies is all about grinding/farming and at the same time easy so yes, farming trophies i was…or am..or whatever… and if i want that platinum i have to play it for at least 10 more hours as i never planned out how to play the game in order to get trophies faster so now i am sitting in the corner with a lot of expensive equipment that i really don’t need anymore as all i need now is 10 million on my account… 43 hours and i have 2.7 million… OMFG!.

If i ever will platinum this game rely on one thing and one thing only… if i will go to a really boring hotel this summer or not….. time will tell but one thing is for sure and that is that this game has made me understand that farming can be fun and that i should look into buying the new “NOT CASUAL” farming simulator game just released a few weeks ago for the VITA….

I am glad that there ain’t a Farming Simulator game for the PS4…yet…