In video games, there is a direct link between food and health: eating food in games is often a way to heal yourself. You’ve probably wondered at some point, “Why does eating a loaf of bread or a bunch of grapes instantly heal my horrible stab wounds?” And that’s a fine question, but what you should have instead been wondering was “Where does all that food come from?” Because, see, food comes from farms, and I played a farming game, and I need an intro paragraph to get started talking about it.

So! To answer the question you didn’t ask, I decided to buy a game called Farming Simulator. And no, I didn’t buy a heavily discounted copy Farming Simulator 2009. Screw Farming Simulator 2009. This is Farming Simulator 2011. Yeah, baby! It’s updated with all the recent farming advances! It’s state of the art farming! This ain’t your grandfather’s farming simulator! (Your grandfather’s farming simulator was a farm.)

Previous Experience: Uh, none? I don’t even have a little farming anecdote to share. I never spent the summer on a farm. I don’t think I’ve ever met a farmer. I don’t go to farmer’s markets. I’ve never even played Farmville. I did try to grow some herbs this year, but that’s more gardening than farming, plus, nothing grew. I am going into farming knowing absolutely nothing about farming.

The Sim: Luckily, for those of me who know nothing about farming, there’s a tutorial. Unluckily, there are also six hundred other tutorials: every single aspect of farming has its own. Driving tractors. Driving harvesters. Plowing fields. Sowing fields. Fertilizing crops. Cultivating crops. Harvesting crops. There’s also several sight-seeing tutorials, where you drive around the massive farm game-world and visit important far-flung locations, like cow pastures, farming stores, distant fields, bridges, rivers, hills, roads, the moon, Mordor… I drive for ages and never hit the edge. This game is not fucking around. It is huge.

That’s not just scenery over there. It’s game-world. It’s The Elder Scrolls: Skyfarm.

After I drive around for an hour visiting places I immediately forget about, I do the field plowing tutorial, where you drive a tractor with a little plow thing attached to the back of it. The idea is to cover 100% of the field with the plow, by driving carefully in straight lines and making slow, precise turns. Going too fast makes the plow thing fall off the tractor, and driving in straight lines is hard for someone who is used to driving at breakneck speeds in video games and not caring if I hit a few lampposts or jump a few curbs.

Just look at those clean, professional lines.

Eventually, I manage to cover roughly the entire field, with much zigzagging and stopping to reattach the stupid plow. It takes almost a half-hour, and I realize I have no intention of completing the rest of the tutorials. I assume they’re all roughly the same thing: get into some sort of farming vehicle and drive around on farmland and do farming all over it. So, I enter “Career Mode” in hopes of just figuring things out as I go along. Career Mode welcomes me by basically saying, “Since you know so much about farming, smartass, go do some,” so I jump in my tractor, hook up my seed trailer, fill it with seeds, and start driving around a large field near my virtual farmhouse. The field is roughly 7,000 times larger than the one I practiced on in the tutorial, which means 7,000 times more fun, except it really means 7,000 times more driving slowly in a straight line and wishing a meteor would strike my real house just so I have an excuse to stop farming.

Then, I notice an option to “Hire Worker,” and when I select it, the tractor starts driving itself around. Huh! I don’t have to physically sit here doing farming all day? The game will do it for me? Excellent.

I leave my worker to handle the work while I go eat lunch, have a shower, and watch a little Tour De France on TV. This is great. I’m having a fine time farming so far. Gradually, though, it starts to bother me that I paid real life money for a game that is now playing itself in another room while I watch television. I eventually force myself to sit back down at my computer, where I see that my worker has planted half the field but then driven into the scarecrow and is just sitting there, unable to navigate around it. On the plus side, the half of the field he’s planted has already begun to grow.

My worker didn’t finish the tutorials, either.

Annoyed at having to personally play the game I bought, I sigh deeply and drive around planting the rest of the field until I get bored two minutes later. Then I attach my fertilizer sprayer and drive through the corn so it will grow faster, because the faster my corn grows, I figure, the sooner I can stop doing this. When night falls, I try to enter my house, to see if my farmer can watch TV, or maybe at least hire someone to watch TV for him so I can go actually watch TV, but I can’t get into my house. So, I drive around aimlessly on my tractor with the headlights on until morning.

I have accomplished corn.

My corn crops have gotten pretty big overnight, so I decide to try to harvest them, though I didn’t take the harvesting tutorial, so I’m not sure how to go about it. I try using my “cutter,” hoping it’s the right thing to do. Do you cut corn? With a cutter? Is that what you do to corn? I don’t know if that’s what you do to corn. At any rate, it doesn’t work. I make another pass with the fertilizer, hoping the corn will grow so much it will gain sentience, evolve limbs, and walk right off the field and into to the Corn Store to sell itself. No luck. With my corn crops starting to turn brown, I finally get desperate and visit the farming supply store down the street. There are a number of things for sale, from the Pottiner AEROSUM 3000 Sowing Machine to the Monsoon TRITON 500 Spritze to the Deutz 5465 H Cutter to the Krone Big X 1000 Forage Harvester.

Helpful descriptions are helpful.

Of course, I don’t know what any of this stuff is and I have no money for it anyway, so I have to sell a bunch of farming equipment I already own to afford the corn harvesting device I’m not sure is the right one. I do all the things I just said, and I’m told my new “corn header” has appeared on my farm. My corn is looking very brown by this point, and in the midst of frantically trying to attach my corn header to my corn truck (or whatever it’s called), I inadvertently run over a moving car.

SORRY. SORRY. CORN EMERGENCY. SORRY.

Happily, my new corner header works, though I have to drive very slowly, and it fills up very quickly, so I have to drive back to my corn trailer and spray my corn shavings (or whatever) into it before heading back out to the field to cornhead more corn. Each trip takes roughly forever. By the time my corn wagon is filled halfway, I’m so bored I just want to burn the entire virtual farm down and collect the virtual insurance. With my hatred for pretend-farming glowing brightly, I drive off in my tractor, pulling my partially filled trailer of corn molecules. I strikes me that I don’t really know where I’m going or what I’m doing or how to sell my corn. I’m just driving around the streets in a tractor pulling a bunch of goddamn corn dust. All I know is this: if I sell my corn, it will make me money, and if I have more money, I’ll be able to buy more farming things, and if I have more farming things, I’ll be able to do more farming, and I desperately don’t want to do any more farming.

I drive aimlessly for a bit, then stop my tractor in the middle of the street, jump out, and run across a field into a barn. There, hidden and ashamed, I turn off the game forever.

Conclusion: I am not a farmer. Oh God, I am not a farmer. And this isn’t a slam on Farming Simulator 2011. If you have any interest in being a virtual farmer and building a farming empire, this game will scratch that itch six ways to Sunday. There’s even multiplayer, in case you have a friend who also wants to pretend farm with you. That friend will not be me, because, man, I am not a farmer. If anything, I am less of a farmer than I was when I started being a farmer, and when I started being a farmer, I was already so much not a farmer. I am negative two farmers.

The objectives of most of the video games I play fall into one of two categories: kill all of the people, or help some of the people by killing all of the other people. As a result, I’ve spent thousands of hours committing extreme and remorseless acts of violence upon virtual human beings. While I find causing horrible injuries to be a lot of fun, I figure it might be nice try to healing a few, so today I’m going to put down my knife and stop cutting people, and pick up a knife and start cutting people. But in a helpful way.

I bought a copy of Surgery Simulator, by Excalibur Publishing, a game that lets you perform a number of surgical operations on sick or injured patients, or as my gamer brain interprets the goal: kill all of the injuries with careful medical violence.

Previous Experience: I’ve never performed surgery in real life, though when I was a kid I had a wart on my elbow that I decided to cut off using an ice cube and a pair of scissors. I learned that ice doesn’t do anything but make your elbow sort of cold, and that cutting part of yourself off with scissors hurts and you should stop it right away. In video games, I’ve played as a medic in combat games every now and then, though medically speaking, the healing mainly consisted of handing a medical kit to someone in need or pointing a magic healing ray at a large, bald, hollering Russian. Surgery Simulator promises to be a bit more complex.

The Sim: The entire game takes place in single operating room, and the “animated surgical staff” promised on the box consists of an anesthetist and a “theater sister” who stand stock still but sometimes move their arms a little bit to adjust their masks.

Now, now, nurse. There will be plenty of time for sobbing after the surgery.

The tutorial quickly walks me through the steps of how to cut a hole into someone’s arm and sew it back up. It’s pretty easy: you have a tray of the items you’ll be using, and the theatre sister tells you exactly what to do at every step. You start by shaving the area, disinfecting it with orange spray paint, then cutting it open by following the green dotted lines. There’s a little bit in the middle where you have to fiddle with sliders to adjust the anesthetic and infuse the patient if they lose too much blood, then you follow more dotted lines to stitch them back up.

My first real surgical procedure is on a man who fell down while doing some shopping and cut his arm and hurt his leg. It amounts to giving him a couple stitches and a bandage, which doesn’t really seem to warrant a complete surgical staff and a sterile operating room. Also, how much of a spaz do you have to be to you tear open your arm while shopping? Despite my hatred for the patient and his stupid clumsy shopping behavior, I go about my task, carefully shaving around the wounds, and when that doesn’t satisfy the game, being certain to shave inside the wounds as well. Then I stitch up the wounds, and wrap a bandage around the patients leg.

Stitching is tricky for new surgeons, especially those with attention-starved cats sitting in their laps.

Once I’m done with the shopping guy, it’s on to a real real procedure: removing someone’s appendix. First, I spray paint the guy’s stomach orange with disinfectant, then make an incision with a scalpel, then attach retractors to hold the wound open. Using forceps, I sever the connective tissue, then grab the tip of the appendix and carefully pull it out of the appendix hole I just made. This is what is known in medical circles as “really gross.”

Nurse, the patient appears to be infected with a large alien worm. Please hand me the medical flamethrower.

Though I was definitely happier before I knew the human appendix looked like a penis, the procedure still seems to be going well, right up until the point where it starts going less well. Iâ€ve been neglecting what we qualified surgeons refer to as “That Annoying Beeping Noise.” This wuss on the slab apparently canâ€t handle having his stomach sliced open and his inner penis yanked out, and his vitals have gotten “Too Beepy” (again, qualified surgeon-speak). I’ve failed. The operation is over.

With the patient dead due to my ignorance, I grimly check the clock on the wall and choose the option for “Declare Time Of Death In A Somber Tone Of Voice.” I click on the door to the waiting room, and inform the weeping family that we did everything we could, but unfortunately, their beloved whatsisname has died from an acute case of deadly stomach penises. Then I click on “Go Home To Giant Mansion” where the theater sister does her best to console me with tender, barely animated sex. Afterward, I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, and click on the option to “Wonder Why, With All My God-Given Surgical Talents, I Couldn’t Save Him, Dammit.”

Okay, the preceding paragraph is a complete fabrication. What really happens is an angry window pops up and tells me the patients vitals went critical and they had to stop the operation. I guess they just stuffed his extra penis back into him, because I get to try again from the beginning.

One of the tools on my tray: the severed hand of a more talented surgeon.

This time I’m more careful with my patient’s Beeps. As soon as I detect a change, I stop what I’m doing and start adjusting the anesthesia and infusion sliders to keep his vitals within acceptable limits. Again, I muff it, but on the third try I manage to keep his stupid fragile body alive long enough to kill his internal dong and sew him back up.

By my third operation, I’m in the zone. I start skimming the instructions just long enough to spot the proper tool name, grab it, and click along the appropriate guidelines, fussing with the infusion and anesthetic sliders when I notice the patient’s vitals changing. Soon Iâ€m blowing through hernia operations, cutting out tonsils, removing varicose veins, and repairing leg fractures (with a drill and giant screws) while barely paying attention to anything. The only procedure I’m having trouble with is bandaging, which is probably the only thing Iâ€m actually qualified to do in real life.

I’ve implanted dual exhaust pipes in the patients leg, in a procedure the medical review board will later call “Pointless and irresponsible, yet bitchin'”

Then, we reach the final operation, cataract surgery. Damn! Itâ€s like the game knew my one weakness: unlike most people, I donâ€t enjoy the thought of someone sticking a knife into my eye. Even with the low-grade graphics, I’m not particularly comfortable messing around with a giant eyeball. As soon as I start destroying the lens of the eye, the patient goes from being Beepy to Too Beepy to Very Seriously Beepy Indeed. The operation is halted with half the patient’s eye cut out. Sorry! At least an eyepatch will let you look kinda cool in the meantime.

Nngh.

Conclusion: I am a surgeon! And not even a terrible one, mostly. After a couple false starts and ten minutes of practice, it turns out surgery is super easy. You just sort of pay attention and do what the nurse tells you, and if you fail, you try again, and no one ever dies or sues you.

Over the course of my long and storied gaming career, I’ve done a lot in service of saving the world. I’ve slain dragons, rescued princesses, and disarmed nuclear weapons (not to mention, detonated a few). I’ve protected the President, assassinated Hitler, and obliterated aliens from other galaxies. I’ve piloted fighter jets, submarines, battle mechs and interstellar space ships, all with the goal of saving humanity from utter destruction. Long story short, I’ve saved the world. A lot.

Frankly, I’m tired of it. Let other gamers save the world: I just want to live in it. Luckily, there are a number of down-to-earth simulation games that will allow me to do just that. Today, I’m looking at a sim called Bus Driver, by SCS Software, that lets me inhabit the presumably uncomplicated guise of a driver of buses.

Previous Experience: In reality, I’ve never driven a bus, but I’ve unhappily ridden on my fair share. In my years of commuting by bus in San Francisco, I’ve learned how it works: you wait for six hours at a bus stop, and no buses come. Then, three buses show up at the same time, the first crammed with several dozen sweaty, angry passengers, the other two completely empty. Then, everyone at the bus stop tries to jam themselves onto the first bus, because FIRST BUS. Who the hell wants to show up at the next stop three seconds later than everyone else?

I have driven buses in video games before, though usually as a hijacker: yanking the driver out of his seat, throwing him to the curb, and peeling away with horrified passengers screaming for their lives. This time, however, the horrified passengers will be screaming for their lives because of a legit bus driver.

Passengers don’t climb aboard: they teleport onto the bus, which seems a waste of such a useful talent.

The Sim: I’m given a choice of buses (school bus, commuter bus, tour bus, and even a prison bus),  an established route to follow, and tasked with picking up and delivering passengers to their destinations in a safe and timely manner. Driving is simple enough, I just use the WASD or the arrow keys, and I can signal, check my mirrors, change the camera view, or honk my horn at the other vehicles I’m about to slam into.

The first real disappointment comes while I’m driving a school bus. I remember my school bus driver opening the door by grabbing and moving a giant lever, almost like the kind mad scientists use to turn on their mad science machines in mad science movies. I only get to press the Enter key, which is a huge letdown. What happened to all the giant levers I was promised as a kid? (See also: voting booths.)

Remember to carefully check your mirror and properly signal before screeching the wrong way across four lanes of traffic and over a concrete median.

The driving must be done very carefully, as penalties are awarded for even the slightest of transgressions. I’m penalized early and often for braking too hard at my stops: the passengers scream in horror and I lose points. I don’t know why the passengers seem so shocked: in my experience, all buses brake too hard. It’s part of riding a bus, the simple fact that you will routinely and violently be launched forward in your seat every time the bus stops, and thrown off your feet if you happen to be standing. As far as I know, there are only two buttons on a bus: the Brake Too Hard button and the Make Air Smell Like Feet button, and both are constantly in use.

I’m also given a penalty for not signaling turns, for arriving late at a stop, and even for leaving a stop too early, which is the true peril of public transit: you may, occasionally, be on time, but you will never, ever, be early. In Bus Driver, If you reach a stop ahead of time, you have to wait for the clock to expire before you can depart. Luckily for me, if not for my passengers, I’m almost always late.

I also notice the bus I’m driving constantly fades in and out of view, as if were struggling to remain firmly rooted in our dimension. Perhaps it has traveled back in time like Marty McFly and romanced its own mother, thus jeopardizing its very existence! Or, it’s just so you can see through your bus to avoid ramming other cars. (It doesn’t work.)

I can’t be with you any more, school bus. I’ve got a second deck now. I’ve grown. You haven’t.

At least I’m given points for doing things right. A Green Light bonus is applied by simply driving through a green light, which is about the lowest expectation you can have of a bus driver. I discover that signalling properly while turning or changing lanes also gets me awarded points. Naturally, thirty years of gaming instincts leads me to try to exploit the system by making 763 unnecessary lane changes while signaling, hoping to run up my score. The game doesn’t seem to notice unless there’s an actual reason for changing lanes. Stupid crafty game.

A helicopter! Where’s my rocket launcher? Oh. Right. I don’t do that anymore.

In one assignment, while driving passengers from the airport down a long, winding, snowy road, I notice I’ve gotten a Perfect Mile bonus! A bonus for driving an entire mile without veering dangerously out of my lane, running a red light, or braking so hard the passengers’ teeth wind up imbedded in the seat in front of them. I’m so distracted by the notification (as well as the realization that it’s the first time I’ve driven a perfect mile despite playing for hours) that I immediately lose control of the bus and careen into the oncoming lane, thus earning me a penalty before the bonus is even finished being awarded.

Hey guys! I’ve driven a mile without ever once endangering yYEAAAAGGGHHH

A break from boring, careful driving presents itself, when I’m tasked with driving a busload of prisoners to begin their exciting new lives of getting repeatedly buttsexed in jail. I have to drive through the police checkpoints, and try not to hit anything, but otherwise, to hell with traffic lights and turn signals! Free from checking my blind spots and braking six blocks in advance of bus stops, I wind up hitting quite a lot of things. Refreshingly, the prisoners laugh and cheer when I swerve, hit the brakes too hard, or take out a lamppost or fire truck. I’m also pretty sure they’re not worried about arriving late to Cornhole State Prison. When I finally make it to jail after ramming a couple squad cars and driving over a few curbs, I’ve gotten a record low score but the prisoners still applaud, my only happy passengers to date.

Conclusion: I am a bus driver. But, I’m not a great bus driver. To avoid violations and losing points, I have to drive carefully. If I drive carefully, I arrive late and lose points. If I arrive late and lose points, I drive quickly. If I drive quickly, I get violations and lose points. A vicious circle, like the one my bus makes when I slam on the brakes on a snowy road.

Got a hot tip on a down-to-earth sim game I should try? Let me know via twitter or the contact page!