Pure Farming 2018 continues to progress and could well continue to overshadow the giant Farming Simulator with an update 1.4 which brings its share of improvements and new features.
Since its release almost a year ago, there was no indication that the title from the IceFlame studio, and published by Techland, would stand up to the title holder of the agricultural simulation for so long. And yet, the game continued to be improved until update 1 which unfortunately put some spokes in the wheels of the studio and marred the title by rather unwelcome artificial intelligence concerns. Today the developers intend to reset the counters to zero and bang their fists on the table with the 1.3 update, which shows that the team of this “little independent game” still has something to do.
Artificial intelligence: the workers on the way to being the most qualified
The pet peeve of Pure Farming 2018, the workers have always performed their work in a basic way, without taking initiative, like those of Farming Simulator, and far behind those of Cattle and Crops. Worse, with the 1.3 update, the developers had rewritten the AI code from scratch, and the workers were no longer able to harvest the potatoes... But that was before. With update 1.4, IceFlame had promised to correct the situation. The team did better than that! The workers are now fully functional, autonomous, and even go so far as to put away the equipment once their task has been completed. And icing on the cake, we can now put several workers, up to 5 on PC and 3 on consoles, on a task in a field. They can now be assigned all types of work, including the passage of the press after harvest, making them more "talented" than those of competing titles.
In Pure Farming, just like FS 19 now, it is possible to send your farmer to bed and pass the time. When you launch a worker on a task, if you pass, for example, 24 hours, you will find the work finalized, and the material placed on the side of the plot, stored. Ideal if you are in a hurry!
Vehicles: 2 new licenses, and not the least
Hardware is today the main gateway to an agricultural simulation. Very often, the players are passionate about tractors before becoming Prim'Holstein masochists. Giants Software has understood this well with the 300 vehicles and countless mods of Farming Simulator, which today has the largest catalog of equipment. This is of course one of the shortcomings of Pure Farming. The Polish title plays the functional card rather than the plural. In PF, no duplicate. Each piece of equipment is unique and has characteristics that differentiate it from another, for example the power of a tractor, or the cutting width of a harvester.
Nevertheless, to satisfy the demand of the players, the development team made the effort to forge some partnerships with known and recognized manufacturers of the agricultural world. Thus 2 new firms appear in this update 1.4: Deutz Fahr and Dewulf. For the first, 2 tractors, the 6165 of 164 HP and the 9340 TTV of 336 HP, but also the C9206 harvester and these 2 cutter bars of 7 and 9 m, unload at the dealership!
For the Dewulf equipment, 2 potato harvesters, the RA 3060, with a capacity of 11t, and the Kwatro, with a capacity of 17,5t, satisfy farmers with large plots. Note that workers are comfortable with these tools despite their size.
A much anticipated culture
Remember. Pure Farming is a great game when it comes to the farming part. Unfortunately, to feed the cows, it was imperative to mow the edges of the road in search of the slightest blade of grass. Nonsense for a breeder! Again, this is ancient history. A new crop is available: grass. And the management cycle is complete, from sowing to wrapping. The harvest has not changed, you still have the choice between the baler or the self-loading trailer. All that's missing is corn and we will be almost satisfied breeders.
Significantly improved graphics
It's been almost a year since IceFlames got their hands on the Unity engine that powers Pure Farming 2018. And Szymon Wawruch, Bart Antecki and the rest of the team are starting to master the graphics part. As soon as it was released, the first words we wrote were “Watch your eyes! ". Visually successful, the game benefits from all recent technologies. For this update, the settings are refined and gain in precision, in particular in terms of lighting, softer, with more realistic shadows on the contours of 3D models. Display performance does not suffer from this gain in realism, and everything runs in “High” on a laptop PC equipped with an nVidia 960M card, and in “Ultra” on a desktop config and its 1070 GTX.
Gameplay ideas always welcome
The young Polish team likes to differentiate itself with small gameplay elements that will occupy you a few hours: search for gems, Easter eggs, ghost treasure hunt for Halloween, ... there is no shortage of ideas and this update does not escape to the rule.
After performing the update, your maps will display a red question mark prompting you to go to the indicated location. Once there, you will discover an old man. Go talk to him, he will offer you, for a few tickets, to sell you a used fuel tank that you can transport and put wherever you want. You will have to wait 4 days to recover your property, the time of its restoration. Convenient.
Your virtual farmer now has, in order to facilitate his nocturnal movements, a led lamp attached to his shirt. And while we're talking about the night, the drone, allowing you to browse your map while reading plot information, is now equipped with night vision. What to take you for Sam Fisher.
In terms of options, no big upheaval, except for a “withering of crops” item that you can activate or not depending on the difficulty sought in the game.
Modding is no exception
Each update brings its share of new features. This respects the rule and it is now possible to import plows and configure mirrors. As usual, the import tool is easy to use, all the work is “pre-chewed”.
IceFlames, a dynamic studio
Pure Farming is back on the scene today and is becoming an increasingly credible competitor to Farming Simulator. The small team from the IceFlame studio shows here that it is capable of maintaining and significantly improving its flagship title. Likewise, the developer seems to remain attentive to the players. Will we have corn farming in a future update? Because all that's missing is to definitely please American and European players.