"We sow the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed. And then....."
Sim games have been a staple of the PC gamer for years whether its planes, trains, lorries or even the humble tractor, but now the trend is increasingly to bring this genre to the console. Professional Farmer 2017 has come to Xbox One so its fallen to me to check it out.
The first thing that strikes you is the look of the game. If it had been released say 5 years ago on the 360 I would've thought the graphics weren't bad but for Xbox One its definitely a sub-standard look. Admittedly one thing the game does well is the differet seasons and weather, but its all on a level that looks very last gen. As the farmer your'e put into a sterile world somewhere vaguely mid-European in look, but with no traffic on the roads and virtually no other people in the game, it certainly makes you wonder who you're growing these crops for!
For those like me that don't know their plough from their seeder, you're thrown into a tutorial mode that guides you through the different phases of ploughing, tilling, seeding and fertilising the fields. The trouble is it exposes very early the tedium of this game, as its just a prolonged drudgery of coupling a piece of equipment to you tractor, driving to the field, going up and down it, then driving back to your yard to swap for a new attachment and repeat ad nauseam. Once you've planted your crops you have to wait for them to grow, so other than buying and feeding a bit of livestock you'll end up simming months on end so you can skip forward to harvest time. Once you've harvested your crop, its off to the weirdly empty town you go to sell your produce. The map isn't that big, so there's no real need for the loading screens that you have to endure while passing between the four areas, it just smacks lazy design.
It can be slow progress making money as the farmer, but that's just as well as there's not a great deal you can spend it on. Unless you're an avid tractor buff then buying a slightly better model wont excite you, and you'll soon get bored of things. The physics in the game are poor, you'll not notice so much while driving forward but try reversing with a trailer and you'll jack-knife and soon as you turn a fraction of a degree, and if you back into a wall or fence there's a good chance that tractor and trailer are thrown 10 feet into the air like you've hit a landmine leaving you stuck on your side with no way to right yourself! The in game music is largely inappropriate as you can be slowing ploughing a field while the soundtrack bombastically blares away like you're battling a giant alien boss.
In conclusion, Professional Farmer 2017 comes across as a cynical attempt to cash in on the success of previous sims without making the effort to produce a worthwhile game. If you really want a farming sim on your console, there are better ones out there and avoid this one at all costs.
Published by: United Independent Entertainment
Genre: Sim
Price: £31.99
Thanks to XCN for the review copy