Rail Simulator Review

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(More customer reviews)The other review on here was written by someone who isn't a big fan of simulators, so here's one from someone who is. I bought this game after seeing that Train Simulator 2 will be coming out next year, and in all honesty, I'm tired of waiting. I had been following this game months before it came out, and was surprised to see that they had already released it a few days ago. I have played it for a few days now, and here are its aspects:
Graphics: Now, the graphics of this game are much better than they are in MSTS. In all honesty, they should be; MSTS was released seven years ago when video cards weren't that powerful. Of course today, we have nice Nvidia 8800's and ATI 2900's (and so on). However, the graphics aren't as good as they could be. In fact, I hate to say it, but some of the photograps of renders in the game look better than they actually do in-game. Also, the resolution cannot be changed in the in-game menu itself; this must be done before you begin playing. But, surprisingly, this game supports HD resolutions, so maybe that's why the photos look good. I am using a monitor that only goes up to 1280x1024, so I couldn't tell you how that looks. I also do not like the fact that there are no anti-aliasing controls. I'm using an Nvidia 8800GT to power this game, and I want these games to take advantage of the hardware I own. But, in the end, the graphics are good; I have seen much worse. I do like the fact that people can be seen and that there is an engineer in the cab.
Sound: The sound in this game is again an improvement over MSTS. The natural sound effects are much more realistic (IE; the birds chirping, cars going by, etc.), but I don't understand why you can still hear these sounds clearly even when your train is going at a high speed. When was the last time you heard a bird whistling while your car was going 65? Exactly. Lol, but the locomotive sounds are nice, but I didn't like the fact that the two North American locomotive's horns were both the same; I like variety when it comes to the horns and whistles. The British horns on the diesels make me laugh; they sound like the horns those really old cars used to have (In my opinion, North American diesels have the nicest, prettiest sounding horns around)
Gameplay: The controls for this game are very similar to those of MSTS, so making a transition to this game should you buy it won't be hard. The only thing I had to get used to was the fact that the A key increased the throttle and the D key decreases it (vice-versa to the layout of MSTS; It was funny when I first played this game as I kept trying to slow down my train, only to realize I was speeding it up!) The display Menu's and HUD's are much more helpful, although it doesn't show you the speed limit of the tracks ahead (at least I don't think it does). The scenarios are nice, but I didn't think there were enough of them.
Game Options: This is the part that aggravates me: In MSTS, you could choose the locomotive you wanted for a route, and play from there. There was also a seperate place to make your own consists. In this game, you have to do all of this in a scenario editor, something I don't yet understand. I may be good with computers, but I'm not this good. I have downloaded content for it, but I haven't been able to use most of it. I'll have to learn more about this process.
Overall: I am glad I bought this game. I am enjoying it, but all the while I feel as though there could have been more potential to it. Perhaps the company will release patches for it that fiz up minor areas and add more options. They already give away official content for it for free (you just have to make an account with the site, which is also free) I will continue to play this game until MSTS 2 comes out, which will probably be one of the best Train-Sims out there. It will be using DirectX10, so it will definitely be using my hardware to is potential. Lol, by the time this game is out, Nvidia will most likely have there 9000 series out, so this card won't be one of the greatest anymore. Oh well. Overall, I give this game three stars. I hope this review has helped some of you.

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Transport Giant Review

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(More customer reviews)Transport Giant really has a good idea behind it. It is certainly more realistic than that of Chris Sawyer's Locomotion. but it isn't necessarily more fun. The game seriously lacks in terrain. The towns are excellent and grow realistically, but the terrain is lacking. As in: there is none. The only "variations" in terrain are images of cliffs that make track and road building impossible, but you can go around them. Anyone who has played a game like this knows that path and route finding is often severely limited by terrain, which makes the absence thereof in this game very noticeable.
Also, routing is very difficult. The trackbuilding elements all but require you to master routing of trains, and then they won't pick different platforms, which makes mainline services almost impossible, and the simplest of routes are complicated by the incompatibility of tracks to be manipulated like they can in Locomotion.
A huge plus is that passengers actually have destinations! What a novel idea! Just hope your new bus doesn't get stuck behind one of your old horse teams, because vehicles *will not* pass each other on a road.
It is a good game, but you'll probably get so aggravated trying to play it that it will probably sit on your shelf for some time before you attempt it again. At least, that's what happened to me. Solid game, poorly implemented.

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Railroad Tycoon II: Platinum Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)The Platinum Edition lumps the original game with several add-on packages.
Let's start off with a few things:
Yes, this is an old game. And, yes, you can probably pick it up for $20 (or less). And, yes, there is a newer version of RailRoad Tycoon out.
But I personally don't find the newer version to be as much fun as this one.
The graphics aren't striking. There's no whiz-bang 3-D animation. There's only strategy.
The scenarios seem easy enough:
"Create a railroad company, and lay track from Baltimore to Washington DC. Make 10 journeys with a train full of people in 10 years and win this scenario."
Or
"Connect New York to Chicago, carry 10 trainloads of passengers between these cities and have a company book value of $10 million. You have 20 years."
Okay, these may not be the exact scenarios, but they're close.
This game isn't just laying track and putting trains on them. You've got to create trains to do specific tasks. Start at a Iron mine with 2 cars full or iron, run to a Coal mine and pick up 2 additional cars, run to a steel mill and wait for the steel to be made, then off to a Tool and Die company for goods, now deliver those goods to a city and start it over again.
The scenarios are challenging, and fun. Sometimes it's not about running trains, but how well you run a company--or how well you play the stock market.
In RRT2 you get:
===North America===
The Iron Seed: Mid-Atlantic states
Handle on The Breadbasket: Eastern USA
Bridging a Nation: Western USA
Silver Booms and the Market Busts: Southwestern USA
Whistle Stop and Promises: Northwestern USA
Crossing the Great Divide: Canada
===Europe===
Birth of the Iron Horse: Britain
Excess on the Orient Express: Europe
Knitting with Iron: Germany
Next Stop the 20th Century: France
Through The Brenner Pass: Alps
When Walls Come Down: Eastern Europe
===World===
Croissants vs Crumpets: India
Which Way to the Coast?: Australia
The Samurai Rides an Iron Horse: Japan
The People's Train: China
Dilemma Down Under: Australia
Cape to Cairo: Africa
as well as the Second Century Expansion pack which takes you into the 20th century with new challenges and newer trains.
Including getting supplies to ports in America to be delivered to Europe for World War 2, running trains in the Eastern Block and Moscow during the Cold War, running commuter trains in the Northwest and a few science-fiction 'future' scenarios centering around a geo-thermal plant in Spain. I found this game very addictive, fun and still enjoyable years after my initial purchase.
Well worth the money. And you can find online guides to help you if you get stuck.


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Railroad Tycoon 3 Review

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(More customer reviews)After anxiously waiting for a Mac release of Railroad Tycoon 3, I find that it's a much-needed upgrade of Railroad Tycoon 2. However, that's really all it is -- I'd be tempted to call it Railroad Tycoon 2.5 rather than 3. There are probably enough changes to track building and industries to warrant a new version number, but other than that and a few interface changes, RT3 is essentially the same game as RT2.
The most obvious difference is in the graphics. The new 3-D engine is fantastic. You can actually watch the side rods of most of the steam engines go round and round. Tracks are a bit high off the ground, which is a little distracting at first, but overall the graphics are a huge improvement.
Track laying is substantially improved from the previous version of the game, as well. Most significant is the return of tunnels, one of the most maligned omissions in RT2. You can also build a bridge over another railroad or duck under an existing bridge, a feature fans of this game series have long wished for.
Gone is the grid with its limitations of tracks at only eight angles. You can now create smooth, sweeping curves at any angle you please. That said, the gradients could use some tweaking. Particularly annoying are the ramps leading to bridges. It's silly to have a 3% grade just because you're crossing a river. Likewise, I found it very difficult to create a railroad in even slightly hilly terrain that didn't resemble a roller coaster. And don't think this is a model layout design aid, either. It's impossible to force tracks to go where you want them.
Maintenance shops and service towers are now separate elements. You can't place a service tower at a depot and have a locomotive serviced while it's making its station stop. This hurts the game's realism a bit and can be annoying if, like me, you're used to the old style station expansions. The good news is that such facilities can be placed anywhere, even where there's no station, and you can demolish them to save money when they are no longer useful.
The construction and demolition tools aren't all that intuitive. To bulldoze a building, for example, you have to enter the track building interface and select the bulldozer. And industry construction is done from the station building interface. No doubt this was done to minimize the number of tool buttons in the main interface, but it feels klunky -- especially if you're used to the old RT2 interface.
While access to the controls has changed somewhat, most of the core game controls will look extremely familiar to anyone who's played RT2. Building and changing train consists works essentially the same way as in RT2, with a few excellent additions. One major change is the "auto manage" option which autmatically sets the train's consist depending on what loads are available at the station. You can select the minimum and maximum number of cars on each train, and select whether the train will carry any kind of car, just freight cargoes, or just express cargoes. You can also manually control the trains' consists. For more realism it would be nice if passenger cars were always placed together in the consist, but I'll admit that's picking a very small nit.
A couple of very handy shortcuts have also been added to train building, including the ability to copy trains. Mac users will find this process rather klunky and very un-Mac-like, but at least it's there and works. One new feature I really like is the ability to replace locomotives based on their class or age. This comes in very handy for keeping your locomotive fleet current. There's also a checkbox which will make the consist the same at all stations in the train's route. Beware, though -- the change happens as soon as you check the box and isn't undoable by unchecking the box!
The economy and stock market works essentially the same as it did in RT2. You can buy and sell shares of your railroad or your competitors, set your company's dividend, sell bonds, and sell stock. Selling stock is just as useless for raising money as it was in the previous version, even though you're now allowed two sales of stock per year instead of just one. You also still have to have a good credit rating to sell a bond.
I haven't gotten into the map editor yet, but from reading the manual, RT3 seems to have the one limitation I was afraid it would have -- you can't use maps from RT2. With the huge number of user-built maps from RT2, this is probably the biggest disappointment in the entire game. It's understandable, however, given the number of changes made to the industries and track building. Still, some sort of conversion utility would be nice for map developers so we don't have to start from scratch.
All in all, this is a fair upgrade over the previous version of the game. I'm not all that sure that this version was worth either the wait for the Mac port or the $45 price tag, but now that I have it I certainly won't be getting rid of it!

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Railroad Tycoon 2 Platinum Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)If you have Railroad Tycoon Gold, there is no need to buy this one. There isn't anything new except for a few new maps. That was disapointing to me. But if you have neither of the previous Railroad Tycoons, this game is by far the most entertaining game I own.
If you like economic type games, one that tests your skills in owning your own business, then this is the game for you.
Also, the stock market effect in this game is awesome. Very good game and one that is addictive.
The graphics are excellent and the levels of difficulty are fairly easy to down right impossible.
If you do not have this game, I highly reccomend it!

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Establish yourself as a mogul to be reckoned with as you work your way up the ranks of the railroad industry!

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TRANSPORT GIANT - GOLD EDITION (DVD-ROM) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm so glad I bought this game despite all the negative reviews.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics (for this genre)
- Great gameplay (challenging, interesting and reasonably realistic)
- Huge variety of vehicles (from horses to trucks to trains to ships to airplanes to blimps and everything in between)
- Strong financial and industrial model
- Realistic yet fun
- Signals for railroads
- Visible city growth
- Competent AI
Cons:
- Eats memory as your network expands (slows down your system when you exit the game)
- Little help info (although there's a user manual on the website)
- Poor game music (if that matters)
I've previously played Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Railroad Tycoon 2 and Locomotion, and Transport Giant is far better than the rest. TTD and Locomotion have pathetic graphics which completely neutralizes any benefit of good gameplay, while RT2 is plain unrealistic in its lack of signals, deals with trains only and cities never grow beyond hutments!
This little-known gem is one of the best strategy games I've played, especially among the tycoon types. Granted, it's not perfect and there's a lot of negative publicity around it, but the least you can do is download the demo and try it for yourself.

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