Features Tractor Racing and Farming Simulator 2019

Last week I took a trip to Yorkshire to check out Farming Simulator 19 and experience various farm related activities. On the lead-up to this excursion I was dreading the weather, imagining it would be a dreary, wet and freezing November day. But fortunately, the sun was shining, and this strange period of unusually warm weather prevailed. Setting off from the local town of Masham, this gave a feeling of that ‘historic Britain’ countryside referred to in Forza Horizon 4, in fact it seems like most of FH4 was based on this region, anyway I digress.

Farming Simulator 19 is the market leading simulation for all thing’s agriculture and this trip was to bring us closer to the action, visiting a working farm, driving tractors and herding sheep. This sounded like great fun and it turned out even better than expected. Not just tractor driving but tractor racing, followed by sheep herding, pig herding and lots of fun activities.

The weather was perfect, simply unreal for this time of year and it really enhanced our enjoyment of the day, set within this idyllic countryside and such a picture-perfect farm in so many ways. Driving tractors felt like second nature, they were responsive and enjoyable to drive. Surprisingly and yet obviously there is no form of force-feedback, the wheel being light yet responsive. The pedals being sensitive yet designed to be used while wearing heavy boots, so in general you’ll be driving in a comfortable gear with your foot down. Of course, if you don’t want to do that, you can always invest on one of the many impressive John Deere tractors, which also feature a self-driving option and you’ll hear an insightful conversation on that in the video below.

Winning our tractor races (representing Team VVV and big thanks to Stuart and Jim), the sheep herding was generally about remaining calm, slow controlled actions rather than any furious movements to achieve the objective. On the other hand, excitable pigs were a whole different experience, a more physical affair but hugely enjoyable. This was followed by burgers and sausages in buns for lunch (veg option available). These activities represented just a small part of what was available and so I wanted to give a shout out to https://www.farmadventure.co.uk/ if you want to experience that and more, it comes highly recommended. I’ve added a gallery below with various photo’s from the day.

Back to the game and I tested it with both a wheel and controller, the wheel feeling surprisingly authentic, lose yet the turning circle was set perfectly. By far the best way to play the game if you intend to put a lot of time into it. Returning home, I tested the game with a controller and you can see my experience in the stream below, suffice to say that as you drive more vehicles the complexity of button presses also increases and this can form as a bit of a memory test. If you haven’t played a farming sim they can be rather addictive, when you start caring for your farm it grabs you and takes the gameplay to a whole new level. Farming Simulator 19 has been an enjoyable if occasionally frustrating experience and gives a great sense of satisfaction when a job is completed correctly. Farming Simulator 19 is out now for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Log in with:

Please login to comment

0 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments