Dovetail Games provides an accurate train simulator. It’s unforgiving, brutal at times, but oddly relaxing and fun when things start running smoothly. It is truly a train simulator.
Confession time. Simulators, at least during my young reviewing career, never really did it for me. I could never understand the fascination of simulating something in a game that is in real life. It’s like getting a job in Shenmue to earn money. Why is that fun? Okay, it’s fun. Bad example. Let me reset. For example, Flight Simulator, in all its glory, just was ‘blah’ at best for me when I started this reviewing gig back in 1999. Where is the fun of flying across the country and landing safely? The closest I ever got to accepting a simulator is when Flight Simulator had a World War II edition with a flight stick included. Now, that was a simulator. It was a war simulator, so it basically was just a war game. That’s probably why I enjoyed it because life/death was on the line and that was never the case with Flight Simulator. I know, I know…there is life and death on the line in hindsight, but still It wasn’t like Southwest flight 3227 was going into the Pacific to win a war.
Anyway, back to the point, simulators have never been my thing.
Until I reached the age of 45 and life pumped the breaks on how much action/adventure I needed, and started to focus on getting the job done.
Now, simulators are interesting as f***.
I guess I have to watch CSI now.
Anyway (pt2), I have found a simulator that has not only piqued my interest as an old-timer but also as a gamer. Train Sim World 2: Rush Hour is far more than I expected from a simulator. Having been on nearly no trains in my life outside of Tokyo (subway), Chicago (subway), and Sweden (OOOOO, fast train), I never knew what went into commanding a train on a day-to-day basis. I know what it takes now thanks to this simulator and it’s rather cool for no good reason.
Okay, there are some good reasons. Let’s get into them.
Good reasons
Dovetail Games specializes in train simulators and from what I have played and understand with this one, they’re good at it. This train sim is damn complicated too, as it is beautiful. The complication of the game is memorizing how to turn on, prepare, and operate a train. For example, there are no less than 7-10 steps to prep the Boston ASC-64 train to move forward. These steps include turning on the engine, releasing the brakes, putting the train in the forward motion, kicking in the throttle, turning on the lights, and you can’t really do any of that prior to turning the damn thing on, unlocking the doors, and loading your passengers. There’s so much here that you must think about, but once the sim gets going, you’re simply concentrating on stopping/going and not accidentally kidnapping your passengers (it happened once…okay, twice). Well, it’s more complicated than that, but for the most part that is what the game feels like once the…wait for it…train leaves the station.
Dad joke aside, the game does a good job of giving you a taste of what train operators go through. It’s intriguing and strangely relaxing, especially if you enjoy going through certain steps in a certain order in a restricted amount of time. I guess that was a huge plus for me with this one, as it just felt like I was doing something productive and trying to get people to their place on time while meeting my own goals. Being a production person to my very core, getting things done on deadline is a firm part of my personality. Trust me, when I break deadlines on a review, it kills me on the inside, and I can feel it. My own production demons aside, if you enjoy that type of gameplay where you must be a robot to get the job done, then you’re going to enjoy this game. That isn’t a knock. People love that type of structure. Is there a lot of action included in this? If you think going down a track and accurately braking to let your passengers off on time and safely is action, then hell yeah there is a lot. Again, the gameplay plays off your need to do things in the right order and get them done on time. If nothing else, this game will give you a profound respect for those who operate trains.
If you can grasp the operation of at least one train, then you’re in for a treat with the other train offerings. You get to tour the world (because there is ‘world’ in the name) and control a variety of different trains, including an electric train that roams Germany and such with a lot of speed behind it. The controls of each train are different, ranging from complicated as hell to simple. It’s neat to see how each train functions and the different ways manufacturers treat the designs.
Beyond complicated gameplay and train variety, the actual look and feel of this game are outstanding. My system is running on a 3060 card, so ray tracing, shading, textures – everything is intact and replicates what you would see on a Boston Sprinter line. The train, the ASC-64, is replicated well. Built by Siemens, the ACS-64 is a speedy, shiny train that looks and feels like its real-life counterpart, and it runs smoothly. The fact that the devs included a camera mode to capture your travels in motion might give you some insight into how much effort they put into the looks.
It’s a damn pretty game.
Gameplay and graphics are a huge deal for this title and it definitely achieves its goal in both areas.
Some pennies on the tracks
The only hiccups I have here are the movement controls and sometimes if you do things out of order you can drive yourself nuts trying to recover. Let me explain both.
I found myself a few times getting trapped with my camera to the point where my character stopped moving. The first time it happened, I had to hook up (shield your eyes, PC elitist) an Xbox controller, which reset the controls back to moving. About the third time it happened, I realized that I had to click the left button on the mouse to release my unmoving gaze so that I could move again. That solution was a complete accident too.
Beyond that, there are aiming issues where you must be accurate with your mouse to click on a tiny round button that is next to three other tiny buttons, which may or may not be active. How can they get around such a thing without compromising the accuracy of the simulator? They can’t and shouldn’t, but it’s a pain in the ass finding the right action zone to click on sometimes.
The biggest hiccup I have seen in the game, and there is a reset option in the game, is accidentally doing something you shouldn’t have done and then trying to retrace the misstep to undo it. Is this a real hiccup? Well, it can cause a tremendous amount of frustration, but ultimately it isn’t a hiccup. It’s just how the game works and what it expects of you. I guess I have low expectations of my train training talents.
At the end of the day, Tran Sim World 2: Rush Hour has a heckuva lot more positives than it has negatives.
Conclusion
Dovetail Games provides an accurate train simulator. It’s unforgiving, brutal at times, but oddly relaxing and fun when things start running smoothly. It is truly a train simulator.