Railroad Tycoon 3

"A good game, but hardcore strategy gamers will find it disappointing."

Right away, you may notice some cognitive dissonance in this review. How is a game that scored an 8 with the reviewer ''disappointing''? Plain and simple, on its own it's a good game, but compared to Railroad Tycoon 2, the older game is the better game.

Railroad Tycoon 3 is the latest descendant of Sid Meier's original masterpiece, brought to you by Phil Steinmeyer and the folks at PopTop, who also brought you such games as Railroad Tycoon 2 and the absolutely sublime Tropico. In it, you take the role of a would-be rail baron in eras that span from the very earliest days of railroading to the modern era of bullet trains to three futuristic scenarios that form the late stages of the campaign game. You lay track, run trains, haul cargo, and make profits. The core of this game hasn't changed in the roughly 15 years since it was first invented.

Graphically, the game is beautiful. Full 3-D environments, good camera angles, acceptable draw distances and resolutions even on somewhat limited hardware (my 64MB GeForce4 MX420 did great at 800x600 with most options enabled, but started to lag at 1024x768...if you have a good modern GeForce FX or Radeon, you should have no problems with the graphics), and beautiful textures and models of everything from towns to trees to industry mark this as quality work. Day and night effects are modeled, though to what end I'm not sure, since gameplay takes place over months rather than days. Once you figure out what things are, you'll have no trouble identifying them from all but the longest ranges.

The sound is brilliant as well, but it loses points for being unoriginal. Some music was recycled from RRT2, though since that game had some of the best music I've ever heard, it's not a bad thing to hear it again. The style is heartland bluesy riffs on harmonica and guitar, a wise choice for connecting rails across America, though it will certainly seem out of place in the campaign scenario in which you're uniting Germany. Still, you have to commend PopTop for not trying too hard...trying to make a selection of music from all over the world (or all over Europe at least) would have ruined the adherence to the theme.

Gameplay is where my hackles get raised somewhat. There are minor but annoying issues in track laying, namely that the AI never seems to let you turn track away from the mainline unless you're making a big sweeping curve, and intersection creation is hit-or-miss. The undo function helps in this regard (and is one of the best additions), but trying to outguess an AI is an annoyance in single-player and a game-killer in multiplayer. At least in SP you can pause the game, build your track, then start the clock again...in fact, in that regard it hasn't changed even one iota from RRT2.

In addition, the economic and consist models have been simplified in some regards and made infuriating in others. Gone are the days of micromanaging cargo consists, at least unless you're willing to spend way too much time keeping an eye on your trains to ensure that the coal you're hauling to your steel mill doesn't end up diverted down a river and away from your trains. The game will select the best cargo automatically and set it to haul. You can gain only the roughest idea of what cargo will find its way into those cars, which won't matter if you're simply looking to haul as much stuff as possible, but if you're the kind of gamer who likes to exert control over the game model directly, you won't find much to love here. It's nice taken on its own merits, but the more hardcore among us will find ourselves alternating between playing this game and popping in our old one...it's not the kind of game like Civilization 2 was that prompts an ''out with the old, in with the new'' mentality. Railroad Tycoon 3 is a completely different experience.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing...the game IS fun. It can be fundamentally simple enough to introduce people to the tycoon game genre (and I mean REAL tycoon games, not shovelware like Activision Value cranks out). Unless you're trying to micromanage, it won't break your brain too badly fighting with it. And it's mighty pretty besides and sounds great. I'm just saying that Railroad Tycoon 2 was a better game, and if for no other reason I have to take a point off.

So 9 if you've either never played RRT2 or prefer a more hands-off management game, 6 if you're in the opposite camp, for a 7.5 (rounded up to an 8 because I presume more gamers are in the former camp than the latter) overall.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/20/03