One of the 1st trainsim genre titles, this innovating submission successfully capitalizes on the pop culture of railfans
The idea of the game is simple enough: get into the train and drive away, picking up passengers or dropping off freight. There are several routes to choose from including Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, England's Settle-Carlisle, Burlington Northern Sante Fe Marias Pass, Japan's Hisatsu Line, Japan's Tokyo-Hakone Railway, and Austria's Innsbruck-St. Anton Line. The locomotive choices vary between steam, diesel, and electric. My personal favorite is driving the high-speed Amtrak Acela between Boston and Washington.
In a way, "Train Simulator" is very similar to "Flight Simulator." In the locomotive, the user sits in a "cockpit" with dials and readouts similar to what one would expect in an airplane. There are gauges for speed, throttle, engine load and others specific to the type of train being driven. There are also "unrealistic" gauges that can be turned off which help the driver in train and route management, such as a pop-up which tells the current speed limit, and another which tells the track condition including where passenger stations and freight terminals are. They make it easy to determine when to start slowing down, as that process can take a while. In addition, the train's engineer (you) have the ability to change the junctions (switches) for specific route assignments.
Gameplay revolves around if you were successful in making all your stops on time and within passenger's comfort levels. No actual score is given at the end of a scenario, but a summary will displayed telling the stop times expected vs. the actual time of arrival. Comfort level is indicated via "G" forces, common to aircraft pilots.
The level of detail in graphics presentation is impressive. For its time, the simulation does a nice job with representing the actual routes. In a city, you will see many realistic buildings, roads, cars driving on the roads, parking lots, and basically what one would expect except one curious detail: people. Country areas will also present many of the items one would find in real life including trees, hills, rivers, fields, and even some wildlife. Deer will sometimes be on the tracks and scurry away when the whistle is sounded! The internal view from the cab is nice, but the display from outside is even more impressive! There are several exterior view options available, including tracking views from both ends of your train and a drive-by view. A favorite view of mine is from the inside of passenger cars, so one can imagine being a traveler on the legendry Orient Express! Sound is also very well modeled. Changes in the sound can be heard when changing track blocks, and the outside environment can be heard such as running water, wind, honking cars, and the "ding ding ding" of the bell as the train passes by a road crossing.
The ability to create your own routes is included in the game, however; it is not one of the strong points. It is tedious at best to create a route from one city, and very time consuming. The creation aspect is not simply "point and click," for it appears to be made for experienced programmers. Much of the same can be said for the creation of additional locomotives and cars. However, experienced Gmax users should have no problem with that aspect. With the difficulty in creation, it is fortunate that a few external third-party add-ons for "Train Simulator" have been released. A wide variety in additional routes, locomotives, and cars has been put on the market and greatly enhance the original game. Without these additional assets, a good review would not be possible due to the lack of company-installed activities.
Weather has been modeled in the game, and will sometimes change from sun to rain and vice versa. There are also scenarios that involve snow and ice.
This game can described as "innovating" because of the lack of the genre before its release. The simulation is fun, but after a while it can seem boring because of repetition of driving the same routes and lack of randomization. An online mode would have also been nice. However, the game is very stable and hardly ever crashes. A patch was released to include a few bug fixes and a new locomotive.
After "Train Simulator" was released and was marginally successful for Microsoft, the industry seemed to take notice. In addition to a number of third party add-ons which were released specifically for this title, other simulations appeared on the market. The Auran "Trainz" series was initiated in 2004, and showed just how realistic a trainsim can be. After the cancellation of Microsoft "Train Simulator 2" Auran followed its initial success with "Railroad Simulator 2006," "2007" in the UK and "Classics" in 2007. Microsoft has once again made plans for a follow-on to its original game with a "Games For Windows," completely new title called "Train Simulator" built on the Microsoft "Flight Simulator X" engine. It seems the train simulation genre is here to stay, and we can thank this original game for starting it all.