User Reviews (1 - 11 of 28)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

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.

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.'

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.

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!

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.

Game is a disgrace and disappointment shame on John Deere

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 21
Date: September 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a farmer I am offended by this game, it made farmers look like bafoons with the dullard characters and the simpleton sounds they made.
The game is very disappointing and did not live up to what it advertised on the cover. There were only two tractors to choose from and only three implements. You only had a choice of 4 crops. This paucity of choices was further frustrated by a game that simply did not work, the bugs are unbearable. Did anyone in development ever play the game?
SHAME ON JOHN DEERE for endorsing this game. They insulted there buying market, if this is what John Deere thinks of its customers I will not buy anymore farming implements from them.

Great potential, needs polish

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: August 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

While this game is a lot of fun for the first few days, I found myself bored by the end of the week. The farming gets very repetative and tedious.

Your family members have a poorly designed morale system. They get tired of doing the jobs very quickly, and to boost morale you must buy some "leisure" items (such as a swimming pool or a trampoline) and they can't use them. Instead, you let the family member stand there for a long (...long) period of time and their morale recovers. No matter how many leisure items you have it doesn't seem to replenish morale quickly enough. You can hire employees which don't have morale, but they are moderately expensive, and not that smart -- which brings me to AI:

The artificial intelligence for the people in this game needs work. They will often take the longest route from point A to point B, wasting valuable time (you are on a time constraint to plant and harvest your crops). You can't always get them to stop doing a task you've given them, either. On several occasions when having workers operate the combine (the machine that harvests the crops), after they have harvested the field you can't give them a new command because the old one to harvest the field is still active for some reason and the task wouldn't cancel. To fix it I had to fire the employee and rehire him/her.

There are a number of bugs in this game that aren't too bad. Mostly, this game has a lot of irritations. The camera gets very old extremely quick, the AI needs a lot of work, you can only assign one task per employee at a time (there's no queue), the windows and menus have annoying (but easy) navigation, the time goes by too fast even on the slowest setting, you have to store all of your equipment out on the field because there's no garage or anything for them -- so finding your equipment can be a chore. And the one thing that bothers me the most is the cursor. It's a little slow and difficult to control, and you can't adjust it in the game options.

I would recommend passing this game up and waiting for a sequel or a sorely needed patch.

enjoyable despite bugs

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am not an avid game player at all. Despite (or perhaps due to) working on computers for most of my professional life I have probably only bought five computer games in the past ten years. But I saw this advertised before Christmas and mentioned it to my wife, who purchased it for me as a Christmas gift.

I grew up on a small farm and have a B.S. degree in Agri-business Economics. But like many others, the need to make a decent living took me away from agriculture. This game is a great way for someone like me to release that pent-up desire to be "back on the farm."

As others have stated this game could be great. I also believe it is screaming for a mod or expansion pack. Here are some of the issues:

You cannot have more than one tractor working in a field at a time. Why can't I have one worker plowing, and a second one following him with a planter? Real life farmers do this all the time.

Only one person can enter the Gator or pickup truck. It should be possible to use the Gator to transport two workers to wherever on the farm they are needed. The pickup should hold three people.

Workers often get stuck. This seems to happen almost every time with the utility tractor cleaning barns. It is usually faster to just have workers clean the barns by hand, because the driver will drive the small tractor half way across the county to clean the barn, and then often end up getting stuck with it. The only way to unstick him is to sell the tractor and fire the worker (except you cannot fire him if he happens to be a family member).
Sometimes a family member will get stuck feeding the animals. All you can do is sell the animals, and keep the fence empty. If you buy new animals, they will starve. This is because you cannot send someone else to feed the animals while another worker is supposedly feeding them (but the first person who is stuck will never get around to actually feeding them). I downloaded the patch, but it would not install. I received an error message saying I had the wrong version of the program.

Another complaint I have is the machinery available. It is a John Deere game, so I have no problem with that being the only brand available. But one of the scenarios has a goal of farming over 2000 acres...and the largest corn planter you can buy is 12 rows? John Deere sells 16 and 24 row planters. The amount of tillable land can vary from 200 acres to well over 2000 acres, yet we can only buy one size of combine. John Deere sells at least four sizes of combines. Similarly, I would expect to be able to buy different size grain platforms and corn heads. I can buy a no-till drill, so why can't I buy a no-till planter? John Deere sells them.

This game is indeed screaming for a mod or add-on pack to address these issues. Despite all of them, this game is quite entertaining. I can sit down and quickly find myself playing for hours.

Wonderful Learning Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this for two of my grandchildren. Ages 8 & 10. They LOVE this game! The more you play it, the more new things you find to do. They get quite the feeling of accomplishment from playing this game. There are many different things to keep up with, like the seasons and insects and when to feed the cows and work on the barn and what to plant to make the most money. You can buy equipment and houses too. But beware, it is vERY addicting, even for older teenagers and adults. This game gets an A+. Buy it!

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions