Trainz Railwayz

The Good
The Trainz: Railwayz package contains 3 games, with 3 modes of play.

Surveyor – This lets you design your own routes, as well as design the landscape and scenery.

Driver – This is where you get to operate the trains, either on your own created routes, or the ones provided with the game. There are multiple driving modes as well, DCC mode which is basically just like playing with a model train set, you just control the brake. There is also a Cabin Mode, which is where the real world physics come into play. Also, you can have the computer do all the driving as well, which is known as “scheduling”

Rail yard: This is basically just a collection of different trains and cars, that you can look through and view the descriptions of said items.

The game is pretty self explanatory and moderately easy to learn how to control. The instructions were adequate as well. I found the Rail yard portion of the game enjoyable, as it contained a lot of information about the cars and trains. Surveyor mode also appealed to me as well. I enjoyed creating my own virtual tracks and streets and placing residences and apartment buildings.

The one great thing about this game is it has a decently solid community. You can log into Auran’s “Content Management” application, and download new content and even edit it. In this iteration of “Content Management” you must enter your games serial key.

The Bad
Driver mode was the least rewarding portion of the games for me. Even when switching to Cabin mode I found the game play to be boring. The cabins were drawn very poorly, and the cabins that had LCD displays drawn into them, weren’t able to change the visual output. They were static, instead of switching to show where your next pickup would be. The passengers in the cars looked like mannequins; they didn’t so much as sway with the roll of the tracks.

Rail yard mode, while entertaining, could benefit by having a lot more information and history.

Surveyor mode was fun for me. But the controls were counter intuitive and took some time to get used too.

The graphics in Trainz are sub-par. For a game that touted realism during it’s press release, it sure looked a lot like a bad cartoon. When looking at the scenery, for the pre-programmed routes, Harlem Line, and Metropolis, you saw the same textures over and over. This was a large disappointment for me, as I was expecting more realistic game play.

The minimum requirements statement on the box seems to be inaccurate. I am running a machine well above the recommended requirements and it still had very slow drawing times. This would happen when initially opening a new session, as well as when approaching a city/town with a lot of items on the map it had to draw.

This is also not a game that you want to alt-tab or “window’s key” out of as well. When re-entering the game, the graphics became random artifacts (distorted lines and shapes).

The Bottom Line
POSITIVE

One of the better Train Sims around (this isn’t saying much)

Great community tools

NEGATIVE

Not realistic looking

Overused textures on prepackaged routes

Minimum Requirements inaccurate

A moderately entertaining game that will probably be made more fun by downloading maps/routes from the content management. This is just another game that will be left up to the users to make enjoyable.