Railroad Tycoon II
Company: PopTop Software
Estimated Price: $49.95
http://www.poptop.com
Something you may not know about me: I’m a certified locomotive conductor for one of the largest railroads in the world. While I no longer work for the company or for any railroad any longer (too much time away from home), I still have a soft spot for the locomotives and the railroad. So when it came to playing Railroad Tycoon II, the new game from PopTop Software, I was really hyped. Hey, I’m a railroad guy, at least still in my heart, so this is a game I can really get into!
Getting into Railroad Tycoon II is a lengthy process. Like any SIM game (Simulation), RRII takes time to learn. There are so many tasks that take your time, and so many options you must consider while playing, RRII will cause you to lose sleep! My first time playing RRII was a lengthy process in which I learned the basics. The tutorial map is for the first time player, and it was there that I jumped into learning the game. From finding out how to lay track, setting up stations at each stop, buying and managing trains, and learning to haul the correct freight, my learning curve from opening the box to playing a meaningful game took at least three hours. I don’t think Adobe Photoshop took me that long to get comfortable with!
Is this a bad thing, such a steep learning curve? It was for me when I played MechWarrior for the first time. Or Wing Commander IV. With those games, I expected to sit down and blast my opponents to pieces right away, not learn how to walk my vehicle to communicate with my wingman. But with RRII, a very non-action game, this was okay. Instant gratification is replaced with a sense of accomplishment, knowing I made the right long term decisions.
In RRII, you’re not a conductor or a locomotive engineer. You’re the company president, the Tycoon if you will, who makes all the decisions. The goals are always changing, from connecting Chicago to New York or bridging the east and west coasts. While I wish there was a Mac game that would let me actually pilot a locomotive, this is a lot more fun. Besides, I’ve driven a locomotive, and while the “cool” factor is incredible when actually sitting in and commanding such a powerful piece of machinery, there’s simply no way a computer game could ever compete. Really. In a train, you go forward or backwards. But translated to the computer screen? Boring.
As the company president, you decide which towns get connected. You watch the company bottom line, making sure your company is profitable. When a train breaks down, it can wreak havoc on your budget. You get to dabble in the stock market, the only part of the game that I don’t care for. (Thankfully, you can set up RRII to play without this feature, though I know once I get really good at the game I will want to play that aspect, too.)
The graphics are superb. You can zoom to get more detail on specific locations, such as a train moving or a station, or your can zoom out to an almost global view. This comes in real handy in you want to see which cities are close to a current station, or to check on the progress on an opponent. The trains and cities are done in really good detail, giving the whole game a sense of realism. We’re not talking about 3D realism here, or a game using the Quake game engine, but those features are simply not needed here.
Game play itself takes some time to learn, but once you get going, it seems very natural. I would like to see some minor changes like easier track laying options in which you would select a starting and ending point and click “Most Direct Route” rather than clicking onto the start and dragging to where you want to stop. This is frustrating at times, as the track has a tendency to disappear for no apparent reason while doing so. Selecting a train can also be a trick. If you have set the speed too high, those little trains really zip by. If you have a lot of trains in service, there is no easy way to tell one train from the next if they are on the same route and have the same cargo and engine. I would like to see trains numbered perhaps, or some graphical way to distinguish one train from another.
The user can set the speed of the game. If you are new to the game, a slower speed will really help you adjust. Once you really know what you’re doing, a faster speed will work best. One of my main gripes with the game, though, is the passage of time. In RRII, you start (depending on the scenario you are playing) on a certain month and year. Your goals are usually time dependent, such as connecting New York to Chicago in which you start in January, 1847 and must connect the two cities and haul at least eight loads by the end of 1870. My gripe is that one train can take six months going to and from one town to another, towns less than 100 miles apart. Six months?
While you can play RRII at 800×600 screen mode, the best resolution is 1024 x 768. With the 800×600 setting, you’re forced to scroll during game play, and this gets annoying quickly. Thankfully, my Mac and monitor can support 1024×768, so I had no problems. If your Mac doesn’t support any video card, or you have an older monitor and Mac, you may want to wait to purchase RRII until you get a new system. Like any modern game, you must also own a PowerPC 132MHz or greater, at least 16MB of RAM, and 130MB free hard drive space for installation.
Summary
Overall, RRII is a superb game. I’ve never been “into” SIM games, but RRII may have just changed my outlook. This is a fun game which will take you weeks of gameplay to finish, a built-in scenario editor (to create your own games) and multi-player action. While I have yet to try the scenario editor or multi-player mode, I find the stand-alone game itself to be well worth the purchase price.
MacMice Rating: 3.5
Tim Robertson
publisher@mymac.com
Websites mentioned:
http://www.softpress.com
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