John Deere - Harvest in the Heartland
Let me first make a full disclosure. I hate farming.
The closest I got to a tractor was buying a toy one for my son and it was red not green.
Green, I found out, is the John Deere color – red is the other company.
I am sitting here in front of a computer trying to make the best of it so bear with me.
The John Deere people, through Destineer studios have made numerous games involving
farming. This one, Harvest in the Heartland is a farming sims – real as can be on
a small screen. Farming is more that planting and harvesting. Management is an
important part of it. Planning for growth, purchasing equipment – that's where the
tractor comes in, branching out to livestock.
Remember how much work it was to run an amusement park – well this is lots more.
Your Heartland advisor, welcomes you, gets you into overalls, shows you your plot of
land, your house, your tool shed and the Commodity Market.
The CM is not the one that comes to my mind, but a village compound with stores and
services you will need – a construction company, a John Deere dealer, general store,
stockyard, animal hospital, a real estate agent, painter and a fairground with mini-games for your day off.
An overwhelming amount of information is in the Query Mode: crop type, raising difficulty,
ideal growing season, days until harvest, crop quality, crop cash value, crop status.
Whew! And then there is the same amount of information for animal husbandry.
Tools are purchased in the village store and you have to page down the list of things to buy.
Once purchased, there are instructions on how to move your stylus to simulate the
proper way to use a hoe, hammer etc. You start with a $5000 loan from the bank so you
don't have to do it on the cheap. The hoe was too slow so I checked out the John Deere store.
A disk – it's a thing that tills the land costs $4000 and a tractor to pull it, $10,000
so I'm back to hoeing.
But, pay me no mind. The game is only twenty dollars. And even if you thank your
lucky stars that you are not a farmer - I guarantee you'll get you money's worth of play.
Reviewed by: Editor - 11/07
Ages: Everyone