Simulator Special

Microsoft recently announced a new version of Flight Simulator, coming in 2020, so this month we’re looking at why people decide to spend hours playing simulators!

It’s a simulator special… and a few weeks ago... the first ever Farming Simulator League took place at Farmcon in Harsewinkle in Germany…

The format was a 3 v 3 championship to " determine who is the best in the field".

The prize pool was 11,000 Euros… not as much as Fortnite, or the DOTA 2 championships The International… but this is early days.

Chris Berrow caught up with Lars Malcharek, eSports Coordinator at GIANTS Software who developed Farming Simulator… he actually organised this first ever Farming Simulator league…

Chris - If you think about the game and the community and that's what I hope we can do now there's been some criticism... I know you didn't watch Fortnite but there's been some criticism of Fortnite and other sports as well people say well you know it's not really a sport. Isn't it sad and stuff that I obviously don't think that. I think it's a great thing. But what do you say to people who are kind of saying why are you doing farming simulator leagues online. Shouldn't you be doing something else?

Lars - I personally don't agree. No I think having competitive gaming is something that people love. All right. When I was super young I played Street Fighter against my friends at home or WWF wrestling or anything. Obviously people love watching other players play against each other. BD fortnight all league of legends or whatever. I mean games are made to have fun and if people watching it are having fun then I think we do the right thing. And that's exactly where we stand with farming simulator or with farming to Major League. It obviously is the right thing to do.

Chris - Talk us through the winners there was that one person who stood out from the sexual championships this league or was in a various different winners in various different events.

Lars - The winning team was Trevor Borg and I think it was because of their leader Felix. He is a very young guy but he's very clever and has a really really good player. He came just up with strategies that worked so well that he could beat everyone else. There was a French team competing. They were called SDL and when they started playing no one knew them before they came out of nothing and started beating everyone. They were so good and they lost against Trevor Borg. Just because Felix came up with a fantastic strategy to beat them and it worked. And afterwards he taught me look I knew that it either works or we lose. Within two minutes. But you know it is what it is.

Chris - Finally your plans for the future. Are you going to come back next year. I know we obviously just in the recent aftermath of it and you probably won a few days off and everything that. Are you going to come back with this?

Lars - I think we will. So this league is running for a year and we have the what we call a world championship even if it's technically more a European competition right now next summer and then afterwards we're going to look into this and see did it work. Did people enjoy it. Did people like it. Do we still have sponsors backing up because without sponsors we'll be a little bit hard to maintain everything. But our plan is to keep this for the foreseeable future.

There are a few simulators that we have to mention… Train Driving Simulator… The Sims obviously… and what I would describe as a cult hit… Goat Simulator.

Chris Berrow makes Leigh Milner play... an unusual simulator.

Leigh - All right so on the menu screen you can see a town. L is run X to jump and run on the wall. Okay. Yay, I'm a dopey goat. I'll call him Billy. Right. Say another goat. Hi goat. What I if I hit him.Oh oh oh. Oh it's not getting up. My tongue is now stuck on the other goat's bum. What kind of game is this.

Chris - I'm just going to weigh in at this point and just tell you that you don't have to stay within the pen.

Leigh - I think I've killed my guy. There's like a control you can press which is circle and it just lies around on the ground and it looks well your guy looks dead so hitting your head on every single fence doesn't work. Okay. Oh.
He makes noises. How do I do that. Okay I'm out of the pen. I don't know how I did that. So this is where I cause disaster. Okay. I'm running on the highway and chasing a truck. I'm hoping that my tongue sticks to the truck. Whoa. Just caused the car crash. Okay. There's a bunch of protesters.

Chris - Try jumping which is X. That's how you got the fence for future reference.

Leigh - Oh no. I just. I just killed somebody I'm not standing on somebody I'm standing on the protestor and she's twitching... it's not looking good.

Chris - And I'm just going to do one more thing to add to your Goat Simulator experience... which is something I only discovered the other day which is that you can add a jetpack onto your goat for no reason the tool. 

Leigh - Oh my goodness. He does fly. Oh. So if you press triangle it flies. I'm now looking down on the city. That's fly again. I tried jumping over a sun lounger. Now I'm in the sea. I'm not even touching the controls. Put the controls down.

Chris - I think we just need to stop the game right there and turn it off. It sounds like you had fun though with that.

Leigh - I loved it. I think it's more entertainment than actually serious gaming. It's not really a game game is it's more like a sandbox you play for about 20 minutes then that's it. So as long as it's for is it free.

Chris - No.  I would say you pay about 10 quid.

Leigh - You spent that money we could've gone out for dinner on that...

Chris Berrow and Leigh Milner review Effie...

Chris - The next new release is called Effie developed by Inverge Studios. It's a 3D action adventure game a bit like Zelda but you play as someone who looks like a Viking. You can skateboard on a magical shield. I mean what else could you want. 

Voiceover - A story. About a beautiful red metal. Magical. Valuable treasure. Here some. Reach. An old man. His magic shield. And a wicked witch!

Chris - So it looks amazing in the trailer which is why I decided to buy this game. I didn't actually ask you to play it because it was so bad. And the reason why is because it's like a really basic basic platform game. And I got immediately annoyed because they spelt the word disappointment wrong. Grammar police grammar police! And then the main character this kind of Viking guy. He kept saying "I felt an urge within me". What does that mean. Stop feeling an urge within you. And then there was a moment way it says our hero "treaded" on the tile on the floor and it's like no he trod on the tile so it's just a little grammar mess. I'm really annoyed about the grammar.  Effie incidentally is the girl that you're telling this story to. But it took about an hour to get through the tutorial level escaping from some kind of temple or other... then I got to the skateboarding bit on the shield. Yeah. As a Viking sounds amazing through like a red beautiful flowery meadow which was amazing. Like really fast pace. But then you went to the really boring platforming everywhere you ended up. So that amazing bit was counteracted by the fact that the rest of it was really boring. He's telling his I think it's his child Effie the story of how he became a legend essentially by the fireplace. There's weird ghost bad guys that you have to fight you can't grab onto certain ledges but you can grab onto other ones which doesn't make any sense.

Leigh - So what you're saying Chris is that this is rubbish.

Chris - What I'm saying is I saved you from playing this game.

Leigh - So How much was it.

Chris- £15 quid. It was like 15 words.

Leigh - You spend all of our money finding rubbish games disgraceful.

Chris - 3 out of 10 maybe even 2 out of 10. Maybe for the kids only. I would recommend instead to play Prince of Persia Sands of Time which is a much better platformer but it's out now. PS4 for £15.99 actually coming later this year to Steam as well.