Farming Simulator VR Review: It's The Simple Life

Farming Simulator VR embraces the escapism of owning a farm and disconnecting from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. While it accomplishes what it sets out to do in a simple way, it's perhaps a little too simple. Read on for our full thoughts.

The Farming Simulator franchise originated in 2008, comfortably recreating the many aspects of farm life without breaking a sweat. As simulators go, it satisfies a particular desire of those intrigued by managing the minutiae of a farm. Farming Simulator VR takes one step forward and two steps back due to the great execution of its immersive activities, but it's a modest offering compared to the flatscreen versions of the series.

As with many sim games of its type, Farming Simulator VR drops you straight into the action. You start at 9 AM sharp with five thousand dollars, a well-equipped but relatively small piece of land, and a dream. A user-friendly, straightforward tutorial in the form of a narrator thoroughly explains every stage of the game without bogging down the first few moments.

From the back porch of your home you can access your yard, and adjacent to it are the greenhouse, workshop, and a farming field. These areas are your bread and butter and where you will perform your duties every day as a diligent farmhand. A dirty tractor lies in the middle of the field, next to a Karcher pressure washer. It's evident what must be done next.

Taking a page from PowerWash Simulator VR, pressure washing to take care of your machines is a pretty relaxing endeavor. It serves as a decompression from the hard work on the field, though it's a bit barebones since there are no different nozzles to more effectively deep clean your precious John Deere tractor. At least refueling, once the tractor is dazzling, is as satisfying as it sounds.

With a handy tablet that also serves as a menu, the narrator guides you through each area in the farm. Arguably the most important money-making venture, harvesting your crops, unloading, and selling them after spending all day driving is worth experiencing. What is rather laborious is having to prepare the soil for sowing and seeding it. A short amount of time needs to pass to harvest it again.

Although not all buttons are available in a tractor, there are a fair number of options available from turning on the lights to the throttle power of your tractor to move faster or slower. A handy instruction manual for the interactive buttons is always sitting on the right-hand side of the window. While the graphics are downgraded to fit all Quest systems, all machinery is authentically digitized from its real-life counterparts. The upside is the fast loading times, so the tradeoff of not seeing a black screen every so often is a welcome compromise.

At the greenhouse, various seeds like pumpkins, strawberries, and tomatoes, can be planted. Watering them is only one part of the equation. Weeds will frequently appear, and pulling those out to then throw them in the compost is necessary for a healthy harvest. If all goes well, you can pick each ripe fruit and vegetable after a couple of days and sell them for a considerable amount from a weighing scale.

Lastly, the workshop is where the machinery can be easily repaired should it break down on the pastureland. Thankfully, no previous knowledge in the farming or engineering industries is required to fully enjoy Farming Simulator VR. With a wrench and a well-placed hydraulic jack, anything is possible. The game highlights exactly where to place them as well.

Charming little details like a break room in the workshop where you can pick up vinyls and listen to them on a record player aid in making this place livelier. Radio speakers to drown out the peaceful sounds of nature to a more upbeat experience are carefully placed next to every activity you do, be it power washing your truck, picking tomatoes or changing a tire. The only downside is that you cannot choose which type of music to play.

After an honest day's work of tilling the land and getting it ready for planting, cultivating and selling wheat for a substantial amount is fulfilling. Wrangling the tractor either with your analog stick or the motion to manually handle the wheel is no easy feat. Hiring a worker to do the job for you at a reasonable price is also available if you feel like you've earned a day off cultivating and want to tend to your crops or clean your tractor.

A basketball and hoop, a baseball, and cans, which are carefully placed for you to shoot at will, can be found each time you return to the yard. That's just some of the various activities scattered across the yard. The physics are somewhat hit-or-miss, though as a side diversion, it's nice they put the effort in to make it happen. You won't get any reward for these activities, but at least they continue the recreational nature of it all.

While I'd like to sing the praises of this fervent recreation of manual labor and nothing more, Farming Simulator VR suffers from its share of issues. Visual glitches often occur when grabbing your hose or wrench, where the item might move in unexpected ways more often than not. Tools can be dropped even when firmly holding them with your hand.

Hands can get stuck or be unresponsive when driving or using the steering wheel on the tractor. I've gotten used to shaking my hands to register them back into my position as they are usually stuck in different areas of the tractor, accidentally pressing buttons that I did not want to press. Hopefully these issues get ironed out, as driving around the field is otherwise cathartic.

The tutorial, while comprehensive, does not teach how to cultivate, and fails to mention that teleporting is necessary to get on the roof of a tractor when power washing. These actions can be self-explanatory for some, as the mechanics to lower the machinery to do the job is mostly the same for all agricultural-related operations. Still, having a more thorough explanation would go a long way.

It's not customary to lament what is absent in a game, but as the first VR entry in this series, there are some notable differences. The flatscreen version offers robust livestock and forestry businesses alongside what is on display here. This undoubtedly makes Farming Simulator VR feel like a stripped down release. Imagine grooming your cows, or planting trees to have a change of pace from harvesting soybeans all the time.

The endgame goal of Farming Simulator VR is apparent once the tutorial is finished; to live that farm life at your leisure. For those more goal oriented that aim to obtain every single tractor, crop, and achievement available, thus becoming the king of the hill, metaphorically speaking, the reward is the process itself—to manually recreate each labor-intensive task without actually sensing the heat then becomes relaxing.

That incomparable feeling of getting new tools for actions that you had previously struggled doing is enticing enough to continue acquiring every bit of machinery on sale. The reward of the daily grind in purchasing useful items is tantalizing itself with items like an efficient spray hose for hydrating your plants instead of the old watering can. Or you could earn a full-on new tractor that harvests more crops than before.

Farming Simulator VR - Final Verdict

With the omission of certain VR accessibility options, a lack of activities such as raising livestock, and visual bugs, it is hard not to imagine how much more this game could be. Regardless, Farming Simulator VR is a commendable effort that warrants a playthrough for both series veterans and those curious about farm life.

When fatigued by the woes of the world, I can see myself returning to this peaceful farmstead where it's just me and my crops, a land where there is seemingly no one to interact with for miles around. With a few tweaks and additions, it could become one of the must-plays of the current VR generation. As it currently stands, however, it's a calming distraction.

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