Farming Simulator 2012 3D

You don't often get simulations on handhelds, so it's safe to say that Farming Simulator 2012 3D is a rarity. Giants Software has squeezed the fundamentals of the original PC titles onto a 3DS cartridge, and the system has proved a surprisingly welcome home to this most niche of genres.

You start out with three fields, a tractor, seeder, cultivator, harvester, and a container to move around your produce, as well as a bit of money and some stock in your reserves.

From here you're left to your own devices. A couple of floating information points are on hand to teach some of the very basics, but otherwise you learn everything by getting stuck in.

You select which vehicle you'd like to drive by pressing left or right on the D-pad, and a standard control setup of Circle Pad and face buttons handle driving, along with the shoulder buttons to turn the third-person camera.

There's none of the intricate control systems of a Microsoft Flight Simulator - you just point your tractor and hit the gas. Even so, reversing your trailer without jack-knifing is a test in itself.

For maximum efficiency while sowing, reaping, and ploughing you'll also need to become a master of the straight line, methodically going over the fertile land to get the most product from each crop. It can feel tedious at times, but handily you can employ a farm hand to do the work for you while you get on with the paperwork.

And you should definitely keep an eye on the numbers, checking where you can sell each type of produce for the most money and monitoring when it's worth more due to sudden high demand. You can get by without doing your research, but you'll gain more money, and more quickly, if you do it.

Income is used to pay for everyday costs like fuel and labour, but most will go on buying new tracts of land and expanding your agricultural tool set.

You're not given a machine that can harvest corn to begin with - one of the many things that the game fails to indicate - but with your profits from wheat you'll have one in no time.

The game just about gets away with the lack of guidance, but it doesn't get away with its lack of personality: you can't customise anything, you don't speak with anyone, and you don't place your stamp on the world in any way. It's all just a little soulless, like a hardcore Harvest Moon without the bumpkin charm.

You'll have to persevere with Farming Simulator 2012 3D to understand its appeal. It's not a looker, and it's not as detailed as sim enthusiasts will want.

But as a beginner's entry to the world of simulations, it's a novel peek into an otherwise sidelined genre, with simplified controls and accessible gameplay to ease you in.