Game Details
- Publisher: Techland
- Developer: Ice Flames
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Simulation
- Pros: Variety of crops / activities; solid gameplay; the drone; modes
- Cons: Relatively small equipment count; lacks casual options; pretty janky all around; performance
- MSRP: $40
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| Buy Pure Farming 2018 from Amazon.com |
Part of the reason why I feel Giants Software’s Farming Simulator
series sits comfortably on top of the genre is that they have wisely made
concessions to break from absolute realism and simulation in favor of fun. You
can change growth speed and turn off the need to constantly plow and fertilize
and even turn off plant withering, among many other options, all in the name of
making the game more fun for more people. It can be as hardcore or as casual of
a farming sim as you want it to be, and I love that. I also love how easy they
make it to instantly switch equipment, hire A.I. workers, and a ton of other
things. They have put a lot of effort into making it as satisfying and fun and
accessible for as wide of an audience as possible.
Pure Farming 2018, on the other hand, definitely leans a
little more towards the hardcore sim side of the genre, but also has some
interesting features and options that make it a lot more playable and fun than
other entries like Real Farm or Professional Farming 2017. These options
include being able to easily switch equipment via a pop-up menu (still not as
fast / easy and just pressing left or right on the d-pad, but a huge
improvement over other games) as well as being able to easily hire A.I. workers
to do tedious tasks for you with the press of a button (and you actually see
them in the fields!). You can even teleport anywhere in the game world, whether
there is a vehicle there or not, which is something not even Farming Simulator
has.
There are some other accessibility options that Pure Farming
2018 doesn’t have, though. There are no options to adjust growing speed or
whether you have to plow / fertilize / etc. your field more often. And you
can’t turn off withering. It also introduces the need to actually water and
irrigate your fields. In this way, Pure Farming 2018 is much more of a hardcore
sim than Farming Simulator, which is great for fans that are actually looking
for that, but personally, I like to have options to adjust the difficulty /
realism in favor of just having fun. Honestly, farming is freaking tedious and
boring, so having options to streamline and simplify things are more desirable
for me than going in a more hardcore sim direction. I also acknowledge some
fans want a more authentic and realistic experience than I do, though, and in
that case Pure Farming 2018 is the superior game on consoles in that regard and
hardcore fans will enjoy it. On the other hand, it also makes it harder to
recommend to more casual players compared to Farming Simulator 17.
In terms of features, Pure Farming 2018 is the most robust
farming game yet with a wide variety of crops as well as other activities to
take part in. There are different maps to play on around the world – Montana,
Japan, Colombia, Italy – and each has unique crops to grow based on their
unique landscapes and climates. You can raise barley, wheat, and rye, potatoes,
hemp, and even rice. Different crops require different equipment (farming rice
is cool as heck, by the way), so there is a lot of variety. There’s more,
though. You can raise orchards with olives, cherries, apples, grapes, and more
that, again, all require new and unique equipment you won’t find in other
games. There are also greenhouses with tomatoes and eggplants to tend. You can also raise animals like cows, pigs, chickens, and rabbits. You
can also invest in wind turbines and solar energy as well. There is a ton to do
in Pure Farming 2018 and it definitely comes out on top when it comes to sheer
variety.
Pure Farming 2018 does some other clever things as well. Via
the nifty in-game tablet you can do all sorts of things like instantly selling
your crops rather than having to deliver them. You make more money if you
deliver them manually, but I like having the option available to just do stuff
quickly. I also love the addition of a flyable drone that lets you fly over
your farm to instantly get updates on the status of all of your fields. You can
even buy new fields and building upgrades via the drone, which is awesome.
While the game does have a huge variety of crops that all
require different types of equipment, the overall equipment count does leave a
little to be desired. The game does use all licensed real world brands, which
is great, but there are only a couple of choices for each equipment type. There
are only a handful of tractors and a couple of harvesters, for example. It’s
not really enough. More equipment is promised as part of a series of DLC packs,
but it is unclear as of now whether those will be premium or free.
Pure Farming 2018 has an interesting selection of modes that
set it apart from other games, too. The My First Farm mode serves as a tutorial
to teach new players how everything works. Farming Challenges mode lets you
play through 20 different specific scenarios like running your farm during a
drought. And Free Farming mode is the sandbox mode where you are free to do
anything you want. Free Farming mode doesn’t just limit you to one map, either,
as you can build a global farming empire with farms all around the world and
jump around between them, albeit with some lengthy load times, which is very cool.
All of the features in the world don’t amount to a hill of
beans if the gameplay itself isn’t solid, of course, so how is Pure Farming
2018? Kind of clunky and janky, unfortunately. Everything you do requires
multiple extra button presses compared to Farming Simulator to accomplish the
same task. Lining up tools and trailers is really fiddly, too, before the game
decides you’re close enough to attach stuff. The A.I. workers you can hire are
also a lot slower and less intelligent than you’d hope, so jobs take them
longer than it should. I know “clunky” and “janky” are hardly descriptive, but
there is a major difference in the smoothness of controls and overall feel when
playing Farming Simulator 15 or 17 and then hopping over to Pure Farming 2018.
I can’t test this to verify, so don’t take it as gospel, but Pure Farming 2018
also feels like you’re playing in slow motion a lot of the time, too, like it’s
running at 20-FPS. I’m on a OG launch Xbox One, so maybe that’s the problem,
but it definitely feels like you’re playing the game while stuck in molasses or
something.
The presentation overall in Pure Farming 2018 is OK. Each of
the different maps around the world have their own unique features and visual
styles and look quite distinct from each other. The equipment you can use is
all licensed and realistic and looks good as well. The only problem is that the
game has a definite blurry “Vasoline smeared on the camera lens” look that is
hard to ignore. It seems to render things a little further out than Farming
Simulator does, so there isn’t quite as noticeable of a giant circle of detail
popping in around you, but the visuals themselves are also not as sharp and
detailed to begin with so it doesn’t look as nice overall. The menus are nice
and easy to use, though, and the in-game tablet interface is clean and easy to
use, which I really appreciate.
All in all, Pure Farming 2018 has a great foundation of
features to build upon, but it needs a bit more polish before it can topple the
current genre king. As cool as the different modes are, and the drone is, and
the wide variety of unique crops that no other game offers definitely are, the
core gameplay is still a bit rough and the presentation needs some more love.
It is also more of a hardcore farming sim than it’s main competition, and while
that isn’t a negative, it does limit the potential audience a bit based on how
interested you are in “real” farming. Truly casual fans and genre newbies will
likely struggle to get into it, but genre veterans, particularly those who want
a more hardcore sim experience, will find a lot to like in Pure Farming 2018.
If that sounds like you, definitely check it out.
