One day, while I was still a tiny tyke, my dad told me to follow him downstairs to our dank and fairly dreary basement. Confused but curious, I did as asked. As I rounded the corner past our laundry room, there it was, in all its mini-mechanical glory - an absolutely HUGE model train set. The amount of track space alone was mesmerizing, and while I was too young to truly appreciate the amount of work that it must have taken for my father to craft such an amazing toy for his son, I wasn't too young to be giddy with excitement at the prospect of driving (and crashing) my new model train.

Cue the present day and the inestimable Sid Meier, one of the world's best game designers and his company Firaxis Games. Firaxis had already revisited such timeless gaming classics as Civilization and Pirates, and they decided to use a fresh brush on their venerable Railroad Tycoon franchise in the form of Sid Meier's Railroads! for the PC. Results were mostly positive though a wee bit messy in a few places.

For those who have never played the original or ANY train tycoon type of game, the basics are this: you lay track, build stations, and transfer goods between needy cities to make extra scratch that you can then use for further upgrades and to lay more tracks. Along the way various random events can affect the in-game economy or provide side-missions for you, the aspiring railroad mogul, to complete for extra bonuses. Further depth is provided by routine auctions for newly created patents that can help your trains run faster or carry more or even lower the cost of bridge-building.

Both of the preceding Firaxis remakes sport eyeball-peeling graphics that really add some fresh life to those older titles, and Railroads is no exception. Trains chug out realistic puffy smoke, tiny people wander around each train station, clouds meander across the colorful landscape, and the trains themselves are appropriately shiny and well-detailed - plus you can paint them with any kind of color scheme and decals that you'd like. It's those little graphical details, the kind that designers occasionally overlook, that are really appreciated in a game of this nature.

Sound design isn't really noteworthy but it's acceptable. The music is enjoyable and appropriate for each time period, and you'll find yourself humming Railroads' jaunty main theme long after you turn off the game.

Curiously, despite all these refinements, the game itself doesn't feel as complex as it probably should. Once you get a grip on how the whole economic system works - one city needs something that another city has and you deliver it - there's not a whole lot else going on. Though the built-in scenarios do their best to provide sub-missions like ‘deliver 10 cars of oil before 10 years passes' or ‘Detroit needs 40 cars of metal for their fledgling automotive industry.' One portion of the gameplay provides a bit of fun distraction, and that's the track-laying, which is nearly a mini-game unto itself as you endeavor to place the best track for the cheapest possible amount of money. The track-laying mechanism is fairly slick as it's entirely drag and drop with the track changing colors to show illegal layouts or ones that would be too expensive. It works really well and makes a portion of the game that could have been mind-numbing a lot more enjoyable than it probably should be.

A few quibbles remain, however, and most deal with confusing gameplay or unexplained features. One example is setting up train routes - you click on the city you want to go to, and a box opens up to show you which goods are available for that city to deliver with your new train route. Then you click on the destination city, and that in turn opens up another train window. Click OK, and you have yourself a new route. The problem arises when the game decides that your route is not OK. There's no mention made in-game (via a help advisor or something of that nature) of what precisely the problem is with your route. The manual, while thicker than most these days, is not much help in this regard either. It simply tells you that it's probably an issue with track layout, leaving you to muddle through all of your tracks to try and understand where your layout fell short. The other annoying and/or confusing portion of the game involves double-track layout for relieving a crowded portion of track. It's only partially explained in the manual and tutorial and even when you are careful to lay out double or even triple tracks for your trains, they don't always seem eager to use those time-saving layouts.

The opposing AI isn't challenging enough until the highest levels, and even then it could stand some extra help. Fortunately there's multiplayer, but even that turns into a race to connect your cities the fastest, along with some good fortune. It has that whole ‘Monopoly' feel to grabbing properties - he who grabs the most the fastest is probably going to win. A nifty sandbox mode, where you build and lay track free of financial concerns, adds a bit more value to the other gaming modes, especially for those who just enjoy model trains in general, and this helps offset the mundane multiplayer and lack-luster AI to some extent.

Out of the box, the game isn't too buggy. Though it's since seen the release of two patches to enhance stability and fix minor issues. Railroads released at a very easy-on-the-wallet price-point of $40, and when you consider the amount of gameplay, the overall pizazzy graphics, and the simple-minded enjoyment of owning your own railroad, it certainly seems worth it. While it's not the most user-friendly or the deepest game, Sid Meier's Railroads! provides a quality railroading sim for both model train enthusiasts and gamers alike.

Mar 5, 2007 | 2 comments
Tony DuLac