Some men buy a Harley-Davidson when they reach their midlife crisis. I bought a farm in Nova Scotia. It devoured our savings and we ran out of money after a year. But that year was the happiest of my life. So gentle. So natural. So simple. Thirteen years later, with stress kicking my arse daily, I want to go back to that life, but I now have only a tiny city garden. When Farming Simulator 22 turned up on Xbox Game Pass, I felt favoured by the gaming-dad fates.
The title screen bursts with bucolic farm life, all full fields and a happy little tractor. It hits me right in the calms. But the intro video has an aggressive-looking dude talking over a thumping blues track about how you have to fight for the right to smell the morning dew, and pick yourself up when you fall, because “this is not a game, it’s a calling” – which suddenly makes it seem about as bucolic as Escape from Tarkov.
