The Real Farm review

Sometimes the success of certain categories of video games is not easily explained. In recent years, alongside driving simulators and the rarer flight simulators, which still have a certain fascination for a not too small circle of enthusiasts, that of farming simulators has also consolidated. Being a farmer engaged in plowing fields and raising poultry is perhaps an interesting experience, so much so that in the space of five years the eponymous Farming Simulator has become the annual appointment within its genre, at peer of FIFA. And here comes the competition too: So Tedesco has decided to carve out its share of the market in the sector, launching Real Farm on consoles and promising a new gaming experience. Ready to warm up the tractors?



In the "new" farm

Publishing a new title in a context in which the various editions of Giant Software already dominate the market, and are distinguished from each other by very few details, may seem at least courageous. What can be innovated in a genre in which you have to sow fields, harvest crops, sell, and then start over? So Tedesco justified his move as a just and noble initiative: according to the development team, the other cultivation simulators would be not only limited in functions, but above all technically outdated. Hence the birth of Real Farm, precisely the "real" experience of managing your own farm, with a technical sector at the level of the current gen consoles and an eye to the mid-gen ones. Real Farm's clean and intuitive home menu introduces the player to their estate in seconds. The modalities offered are only two, and moreover identical: in "free play" you can go directly to manage your resources as you see fit, while the "career mode" looks like a series of more or less linked missions. You will begin by being the helpers of Matt Davis, the current owner of the farm, who will teach you all the tricks of the trade before retiring and leaving you, for no apparent reason, land, tractors and livestock.



The Real Farm review

Don't expect anything vaguely like a "story". The missions, then, are all similar, at times of a truly unthinkable monotony, especially the initial ones that should help newcomers to become familiar with the game mechanics. In them we will find ourselves always performing the same tasks, always in the usual small patch of land, varying only the tools. Okay, the peasants' profession is not that of explorers, but in this way a title already in itself always threatened by monotony and repetitiveness manages to get bored within a few hours. The tutorial and the missions are not even useful: the poor farmer is left to himself, with the few commands on the screen that force him to take one of the many similar vehicles, to guide him from one point to another on the game map, and to always start working the same soil. If this is the "Real Farm", poor farmers ...

The Real Farm review

The hard life of the fields, now in 4K

Real Farm is not designed as a title with an easy game over: failing the missions that will be assigned by the neighbors or by Davis simply means not being able to complete them in those abundant twenty minutes of time available. This did not prevent So Tedesco from introducing three levels of difficulty: we start from an "easy" mode in which the prices of the products sold are very high and the initial capital to start the farm is given away, to get to the "difficult" one, designed for experts, with high interest rates and high purchase prices for assets. The real sore point of the production is that it adds practically nothing to the competition series, which can also count on a considerable amount of foreclosed licenses to Real Farm. In this way, the title promises what any Farming Simulator is already capable of: cultivation and meticulous care of the fields, management of farm animals, organization of work machines and resources, sale of finished products. An experience certainly not for everyone, but that even those few enthusiasts will find it difficult to define innovative or deserving of some special attention.



The Real Farm review

Paradoxically, even the technical sector, which should represent the workhorse of So Tedesco, fails to convince. The game is proposed as the definitive simulator and in step with the times compared to the latest generation consoles, but the first session is enough to understand that the accounts do not add up. The general glance appreciates such clear and clean graphics (the vehicles are externally made with care) but as soon as you start moving around the playing area you realize that the environments and physics have been created in a way that all gross. The elements on the screen are few and not always credible in size, the interaction with them is non-existent, the collisions between the alter ego and the vehicles simply unthinkable. To give an example, we ran a small fence at full speed driving a tractor. Well, the fence not only withstood the blow, but also braked the tractor with an impossible, instantaneous collision. Add to all this a vegetation composed of four trees in an apparently boundless (and empty) territory, and a country music as a soundtrack, repetitive until fainting. Here, this is Real Farm.

The Real Farm review

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Resources4Gaming.com

5.0



Readers (3)

7.2

Your vote

Real Farm adds to the catalog of farming simulators by offering just enough experience. Pass the basic repetitiveness, which we could consider almost collateral to the genre. Pass missions all the same, recycled one on the other. The customization by the player does not exist, the tutorial is such only in name and does not help to become familiar with unintuitive mechanics, the sound sector instigates suicide. Finally, technically speaking, it is a product in high definition, yes at 60 images per second, but made in a crude and physically not very credible way. In short, if you really have to go hoeing, we would at least like to do it well.

PRO

  • High definition, 60 fps
  • Various difficulty levels
  • Faithful in the proposed agricultural activities
AGAINST
  • Not technically finished
  • Extended but completely empty playing area
  • Boredom comes, and it devours you almost immediately
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