The Train Giant: A-Train 9 Review

With simulation games being available since the dawn of video gaming it's no wonder we are now at the stage where most Sims can be as specific or as broad as you like. From the classics such as Sim City or Cities in Motion, to the more specific such as the Railworks series, there seems to be a Sim game for everyone. While there have been 8 games prior to this one, I had a hard time seeing how this version differs from the others.

The game itself plays like a standard simulator game: Add buildings to towns or cities to attract people and businesses to that area to build and manifest your town or city into any way you please. There is however only one goal to this simulator game which is found in all of its 15 scenarios; this is to make as much money as possible by erecting buildings and connecting them up with roads and railway lines. Also in this release there are 5 bonus scenarios that have been made by the community which was previously unavailable in the Japanese release.

While all of these begin with different advantages and disadvantages there doesn't seem to be much else to do in this game other than try and turn your trains into a big giant cash cow of a system and to make sure that everything will be running through them. There is no challenge with the scenarios and it seems a little lackluster. Sure, on some of the scenarios you get little or no pre-built areas but sometimes this can be more of a hindrance than an actual help due to the built up cities around tracks and only having the outer regions of towns to place new buildings and railroads.

Oddly, when you start the game there is no introduction or tutorial to get you started; you simply get a quick 'Getting Started' guide which is in the PDF that accompanies the game and a manual which has most of the information you will need to have during the course of the game. I suggest anyone who seriously wants to the know the inner workings of the game to read this and keep this open at all times to refer back to anything you will need to remember. Personally, I feel in this day and age of gaming, a simple tutorial would have been fantastic to allow me to get a flow on how the game works rather than just dropping me in the deep end.

The graphics are okay but are nothing to write home about. The cities and towns will light up as the game goes through its day and night cycle but they seem heavily empty. Apart from the vehicles and trains that you control and operate, nothing else moves - everything is static. It feels like the only way you know you are getting people on your trains is to see the money go up. The textures in the game seem okay from a distance but as you zoom in you get a pixelated mess. This is most apparent when trying to make a new road or move something intricately.

The music in the game is lackluster and seems to only play once, the sound effects aren't too great either and I feel more time and effort on these would have given you more of a feeling of realism. Halfway through my session I had to put on an MP3 just so I had something to hear.

The game comes with an expansive custom map editor allowing you to load in and tailor some of the maps to your tastes or to create a whole new level, and your own towns and cities to use during the gaming. This will allow you to create the city of your dreams but it can take you a while to get used to the editor. It can be tricky to use because you can't add multiple items like buildings like you can with tracks or road. The only issues I've seen with placing roads is that all roads can only be added at right angles, so it will always look like a grid and everything will be housed in a squared road system. Another gripe I have is that tracks cannot be added above roads which have been originally placed even if there is room for the track to be placed. This seems to not only be within the limits of creating in the map editor but also on the campaign mode as well, this makes it really awkward when you have pre built cities which you are trying to squeeze a new train line into. However, when you have finished doing your building on your new part of your town or even a new town, you will also end up with floating roads that go nowhere, only surrounded by a few buildings which make the game look empty.

Comparing this to modern simulator games, there is no colour or vibrance about the towns you build in this like there is with others. Look at Cities in Motion or the upcoming Sim City as examples; they have beautifully designed cities and landscapes for you to work with and build on. This is dull and most of the landscape looks old and tired.

There is no multiplayer option on this game which is a shame. They could have, for instance, made an interesting PvP mode where players competed to do objectives first or building cities or what not.

With further time in this game the control system started to grate on me, the keyboard controls are 'WASD' to control your view but you have to use the arrow keys to rotate objects, which makes it a pain as you are constantly switching between the two to align certain items. You can move around using the left click and dragging around, like most other games, as well as the keyboard keys.

Track placement is pretty intuitive and bends and moves to certain areas. You can also adjust the height of the track to go over buildings or even below. Like I said before, all roads must be placed at right angles, which made it a pain.

The mini map is yet another gripe I have with the control system. It is not possible to click on a position on the minimap and jump straight to the point you want; you have to left click and drag to the edge of the screen instead. I found this particularly annoying and quite a hindrance, many a time I found myself accidentally clicking on the minimap just out of habit and then realising that you weren't able to do so in the game.

The game's menus give way to much information and seem bloated at best. You have menus full of information about budgets or stock markets as well as 'Object Placements' which allow you to build roads, tracks and stations options, however there is no colour displays on any of the maps or menus to show you the demand for trains and traffic. The information the game gives feels dull as it is a lot of information that most people won't do anything with, there is nothing to tell me what I need to do next and such. Simple things like "Do I need a new station?", "Why are people not using my trains?", "Why aren't the factories producing any goods?", "Do I need to purchase newer things?". Most Sim games push you to make decisions and adapt the gameplay by telling you what you need to do. It seems as long as the money is rolling in there is nothing else it advises you to do so it's guesswork to see if it works or not. Then again, this is "VERY" realistic.

The detail of information within this game is amazing, down to simple things that most games will overlook. However this doesn't mean that all of this detailed information is great to use. With a massive load of information things seem to be missed and other things like a tutorial which would help new players.

When you do find information that you will find relevant you will still be wondering what the whole point of this is. The game, from the get go, has a simple rule: Make money and make it however you want. Most things I added and did in the game didn't seem to drop my increasing amount of cash. Everything just feels bloated at the expense of being too real. What I would love is an advisor that tells me what I need to do or offers advice. Ultimately I end up with nothing but guesses as to what I feel will be the best thing to do. There is also no feedback, which makes the game even more confusing.

I will admit after playing the game and actually getting some parts right I did feel happy in what I'd done. I laid the track, got the trains running with proper timing and got buses and trucks to deliver goods where I wanted. I felt happy in this but it took me so long to figure out anything that I felt quite disappointed in the aspects that let the game down.

I feel after nine versions of the game there is still a lot of work to be done here, but if you are willing to give the game a shot and invest a lot of time going through manuals and trying to use complex data about certain products or trains then you will be able to get an enjoyable game out of this.