"Good Sim Game But Flaws Keep It From Being Truely Great"

I picked this game up because I'm a big fan of simulation games like Sim City, I'll even confess to having kept my original A-train (Playstation) game for all these years, and Railroad Tycoon for PC was excellent, so this game seemed to be right up my alley. I was not disappointed, it is definitely not a kids game as you'll find it listed under on Ebay and other places like Amazon. It takes effort and planning to buy the right train and put it on the right route carrying the right goods to the right towns. If you are a fan of anything to do with trains, this is the game for you. It's like having a virtual toy train set that doesn't take up hardly any room, and can be more interactive than some real toy train sets.

I only had a couple of gripes. Mostly to do with the menu navigation and the passage of game time.

My menu gripe is mostly to do with the fact that there is no "cursor memory", such as if you have 20 trains and you changed something on the #20 train but wanted to back into it for some reason to change something else, you must scroll all the way back down to it again. There is no back button to return to a previous screen, the menu must be entered from the start again. Makes it a bit more cumbersome than it needed to be.

My 2nd gripe is about the passage of game time. At the slowest game speed setting, the trains barely move at all on the track and time creeps by like molasses in January. At the highest game speed setting the trains fly down the track, but so does the time. If you keep track of the passage of time you'll notice that it can take a month or more for these trains to travel from one city to another. Those months cost you maintenance fees that won't be recouped until the train drops it cargo. I was very disappointed in this aspect of the game, time accuracy is very inconsistent with real life even though these are supposed to be real trains and cities. It does not take a month for a train to travel between 2 cities less than 1000 miles from each other.

Otherwise, I'd call this game a good game. The graphics are tame, but this is not a cutting edge FPS game, and so any visual deficiencies are easily forgiven if you are more into gameplay than graphics. It's fun and has replay value in spades and if you are any sort of train lover you'll never be finished with it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/08

Game Release: Lionel Trains On Track (US, 12/06/06)