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A Farmer's life is neither glorious nor easy....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 31 / 35
Date: July 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

...and this game demonstrates that very well. More often than not, if you ask city-folk where their milk, meat, and produce come from the answer you'll hear is 'The store.' An answer that is far from the truth!

This game provides an interesting look at farming life, the costs and work involved, and provides an opportiunity to see what goes on before our food hits the grocery store shelves. You can choose to play one of a number of scenarios (pre-designed farms with set goals) or choose 'free play' and design your own farm (the only goal being to operate a profit-making farm). You can grow grain crops (corn, wheat, soybeans, or sunflowers) or raise livestock (beef cattle, dairy cattle, or hogs). You can add buildings, purchase more land to expand your farm, and run a roadside vegetable/flower stand. Once you've got the money coming in, you can add leisure items - such as a barbeque, swiming pool, or trampoline - or such luxury items as a 100' statue of Paul Bunion or a solid gold tractor! Watch out, though, as there are many things that can go wrong: your animals can get sick, your crops could be invaded by pests, or everything could get blown away by a passing twister! And, there's always those pesky relatives who drop in unexpectedly when their lives get bad and they need a place to stay for a while.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not an action-packed adventure (like so many other games on the market), but I believe that's because this game is based on a reality that - let's face it - can be quite monotonous.

I think this game is best suited for kids, however adults (like my dad, who's a 'frustrated city farmer') should enjoy it too. It's educational without going into great detail (i.e. it doesn't address what happens after you sell those animials that are fattened up for market), but there's enough realism to keep it from being too 'sugar coated.'

Sugar Rush Of A Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: July 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

John Deere American Farmer is bug ridden, very slow at times, and doesn't come with much else to do than complete 11 scenarios and create your own. I'm a campaign/mission person myself. Despite these faults, I found it wholly entertaining and semi-addictive at times. For a little while. It's a game that could have been so much more though if it had stretched a little further.

The scenarios ask varying things, but each starts with giving you a plot on a large piece of land, with the option of buying and selling aforementioned land. If you've played tycoons before (or the Sims) the layout should be familiar. You can build 4 types of structures: utility, hobby, leisure, and housing. Utility is all the farming stuff; hobby allows you to buy 4 types of extra buildings (like the vegetable garden) where you can get produce to sell at a road stand. Housing and leisure are to keep family members happy. See, you always start with 1 or 2 family members, and can always hire more workers. The family members work for free, but complain a lot and their satisfaction goes down. You can build lots of leisure objects, but you are delaying the inevitable. The family members (except for original one) will always leave.

Kudos for the vastly different family members and workers, I only wish they had more personality. 4 or 5 hillbilly statements does not a character make. Another simulation game I really enjoyed, Space Colony, derived a lot of its charm from the characters.

If you are hoping for contact between the characters, or to get them to use one of the 6 (ONLY 6) leisure objects available, you're out of luck. For better or worse John Deere is purely a work simulation. It goes so far as to skip the winter months, since there is no work to be done (in this game). What you can do is plant and harvest 4 types of crops (corn, wheat, sunflowers, and soybeans) and take care of 3 types of animals in commercial marketing style. You buy them as infants, feed them, then sell them for meat. I tend to stick with the dairy cows myself, since they can be milked instead of butchered.
What animals you buy or crops you plant is your choice, but if you want to succeed you're going to have to pay attention to the market trends. Sell high, buy low - just like the stock market. Watch the trends and predict. Happily, you can store crops in silos until the prices are to your liking.

The equipment, crops, buildings etc at your disposal in John Deere seem vast and confusing in the beginning, but once you've read the very helpful in game help/manual a few times it's not very hard at all. There is no tutorial, and the scenarios are not listed in order of difficulty or any other discernable pattern. The first scenario happens to be one of hardest, but after you beat that one you should pretty much know the game. The scenarios get more and more pointless the more you master the game, as there are long periods of nothing to do and then short bursts of extreme activity. There are 3 speeds, but these are not sufficient to alleviate the switches between extreme boredom and stress for the player.

The graphics are pretty so-so but get the job done, while the music gets on your nerves after awhile. Game play is so-so, but with all the bugs it seems limited. Controlling your people is not as easy as it could have been, and often get stuck in buildings. Be prepared to save a lot, as the bugs in this game can suddenly block off a building or get your tractor stuck transferring grain.

I played John Deere non-stop for about a week. It was entertaining and educating, but the lack of scenarios (hardly enough to satisfy long term) and the bugs, as well as the lack of objects and personality of characters made it the pc equivalent of equivalent of a sugar rush - short, sweet, and ultimately leaves you feeling unsatisfied.

Fine Farming Fun, But Could Have Been More

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: August 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing American Farmer for only a little while, and I don't have much more to add to the reviews that have already been listed. First, as a little hint, your family members WON'T always leave. Their happines is derived in part from the leisure items you can purchase, but also from the distribution of work load (which can be viewed via the "People" tab in the "Farm" report available to you). A family member with a majority of the workload will be much more unhappy than a family member standing around petting the dog all the time.

My biggest complaint with the game that hasn't already been mentioned is the unintelligence of the AI. Each farm worker/family member has an auto task button which will allow the worker to take care of all the non-strategic decisions (like feeding animals, repairing the barn, etc). But, the worker never uses any of the vehicles available to make the task easier. For example, you can purchase a tractor with a bulldozer like scoop whose sole purpose, I think, is to clean out the barn. But, when barn cleaning time comes around, the AI will never use that piece of equipment and will instead have the worker clean out the barn manually.

Otherwise, the game is enjoyable, and even somewhat addictive, at first. But, its not the kind of game that you're going to keep coming back to play again and again.

Some flaws, but a classic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 22
Date: August 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm not a farmer by profession, though possibly one day owning a farm has always interested me. When I first saw this title I was a bit skeptical that a 'farming' game could actually work as entertainment, but all in all John Deere: American Farmer does a fine job of providing an enjoyable and interesting simulation of farming.

So what do you get? Well you get some prepackaged scenario's dealing with goals ranging from having to harvest nearly 2,000 acres in one year to situations where you must turn around a farm heavily in debt. You get a free build mode and also a map editor and scenario maker. All the scenario's are fun and interesting to get to grips with.

You begin to learn what kinds of crops grow best in which type of soil and moisture level, you can also choose the type of seed that you use, do you go for the budget brand or do you go for the genetically modified varieties manufactured by Pioneer. Its always a balance between the cost of planting and the associated cost of crop dusting with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that determine ultimately your profit margin. The same applies for animal husbandry, you can raise hogs, beef cattle or create a dairy, whichever you choose you must monitor the market price levels and try to buy cheap and sell during high price spikes. Concerning the crops you can store your harvests in silage for the time when you can sell at the highest possible price. This sounds easy, but in practice it isn't; frequently to expand the farm you must borrow money to buy land and equipment and hire more staff, which means that sometimes you have to sell your produce for lower prices to maintain your commitments. Thus any expansion you do must be carefully planned out so that you can get out of debt.

The vehicles available are all John Deere, and whilst I don't mind that, one of the problems is that you cannot buy used vehicles or even rent them. Considering a new heavy duty tractor is in excess of $200,000 this makes expansion of farms of this size much more problematic where new equipment is rarely purchased. I feel the game should have given more choice in this regard. The other element which is lacking concerning the vehicles and the economic model in the game is that you can run a combine for 30 years and it never costs you anything in maintanence. Likewise one aspect of farming is the cost of diesel, in the game you never pay these costs, which in reality alternate with the market. It would have been interesting had the developers added this feature.

As was said earlier your family memebers can come and live with you on the farm and work for free. It is possible to keep them on the farm indefinately provided that you can rotate their jobs and give them rest breaks and good living conditions with some leisure structures. Usually a mix of 75% family and 25% hired employees can run a farm remarkably well.

The graphics are quite good and are from a 'birds eye' perspective of the farm, the crops are illustrated ripening, the livestock gets bigger as time goes on, you seen the rain and darkness on cloudy days and brightness on sunny ones as well as twisters and thunder and lightning. The weather is also well modelled and shows how much the farmer is truly reliant on good weather for high yields, the game models droughts which can vary in length, and this of course can ruin all your crops.

My final critical note is that the characters in the game could have been made more interesting. The game models them all as kind of dumb hillbilly sterotypes from the southern states. Considering the game is set in three geographic locations (The Lake States, The Great Plains and the Corn Belt) this is a bit stupid and gets boring.

Bottom line is this is great game, which is highly original. Clearly if you only like action packed games it may not be for you, but if you like strategy, including war games then this is for you. I hope they make a sequel

It's okay but I don't recommend it.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: August 31, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Like others have said, the game does have a lot of bugs. My computer is new and high quality so I'm pretty sure it's the game and not my computer acting up. The game will freeze occassionally, other times i won't be able to preform some actions such as repairing the barn. And so it'll end up in such bad shape that my animals get loose. Sometimes my staff (when on auto) will leave to repair invisible items that I don't own, which wastes a lot of time. Prices to sell/buy animals will freeze, which, as you can imagine, makes making a profit on them very difficult. I have to restart the game every time something like this happens.

Also the game moves kind of slowly, even when the speed is set to "fast." Watching animals mature or vegetables grow can get boring lol.

I like the concept of the game though. If they create a 2nd version it may be worth buying.

I am a farmer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 38 / 42
Date: September 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I live on a large dairy farm my self and I am a teenager. We have 1500 cows and 900 of them are milked 3 times a day. I deal with every day chores such as feeding the calves, and mostly field work.

For those of you who were wondering the equipment does really cost that much in real life. In fact we happen to own some of the equipment in the game. This game is very realistic. I havnt found any bugs on my computer and ive played it alot. People when on auto will not use equipment because it is a decision making process. The help guide says they wont use equipment on auto.

This game really simulates a farm well. You have to have accuarate timing when planting, spraying, cultivating, and tilling the land. We have 900 acers of corn and 800 acers of hay. It generally takes 2 weeks to harvest each. Our hay is so good we can get 4 harvests of hay a year.

One thing I dont like about the game is you cant get stuck!! haha in real life you get stuck in the mud every so often especially when harvesting corn. I think improvements to the game should be getting stuck is working the field with high water content.

I think that the game is very good and I love it. Haha but real farming isnt as fun so enjoy it! I would recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a fun challenge.

Thank you John Deere

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 15
Date: October 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

We had considered buying a farm. We know better now. Thank you John Deere for helping us avoid what would have been one of the biggest mistakes in our life. If your considering getting into agriculture, you really should play this simulation first...

Fun game but so many bugs stopped play.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: October 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game is a lot of fun for those of us who enjoy a clean simulation game without 'bad guys' and shooting. I like the challanging senerios however I have not been able to complete a full game yet because glitches in the game stop play from advancing. One such problem is a combine getting caught on a tree and you can not stop the person from continuing the activity, even after the equipment was sold they would not change patterns. Another problem is the game randomly not allowing you to click on some buildings, or thinking that a new building needs repairing because it has not yet been fixed. These glitches cause the game to be less than perfect, however the concept is wonderful. I would be very interested in purchasing a 2nd version of the game, perhaps with irrigation as an option.

Good Luck!

Great game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game.. but make sure you download the patch! It corrects the problems mentioned. This would be a classic if only there were more crops, animals, buildings, etc. This title is screaming for a mod or expansion pack. But even in its basic form, this game is a lot of fun and surprisingly addictive! The first time I sat down to play, I burned almost 3 hours before realising it. It's much better than SimFarm, and is a title that really is unique. So if you are looking for a different kind of business sim, try this one out!

Too many bugs in game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: December 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game for my husband for Christmas and although he liked the concept it just gets hung up too often to make it enjoyable to play. We downloaded the patch somebody else referenced but it would not install. We may be doing something wrong but there was also no instruction/information pamphlet with the game so who knows. Basically he has quit playing already because of all the bugs so I'd have to suggest that you not waste your money on it.

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