Raise your hand if you remember flight simulators. Now look around to see how many people are staring at the crazy person raising their hand at their computer.

Okay, moving on, sim-style games have been around for as long as there have been computers (I assume). I haven’t really played one, or thought about them, for a while, though. They seems to have come a long way while I wasn’t looking. The other day, Amazon directed me to some recommended video games, and by clicking around I came upon an XBox 360 game simply entitled Farming Simulator.

My first instinct, of course, was to make fun of the game, but then I read more about it, looked at some screenshots, and read some reviews, and realized that it sounds pretty fun under the right circumstances. I don’t typically have the patience for sim-type games (The Sims, Civilization, etc.), so it’s probably not for me, but I just can’t bring myself to mock it—especially considering that I cannot pass livestock in the recent Assassin’s Creed games without using the “pet animal” feature. I came across a similar software package for the PC, John Deere: Drive Green, and I must admit that it is a brilliant bit of cross-marketing.

I also can’t quite mock monster-truck-themed XBox 360 titles like Monster Jam, which sounds like fun, or Kinect titles like Let’s Cheer! Well okay, I would make fun of a cheerleading-themed game, but I found something better. Continue reading →