Colonel_here's Review of Chris Sawyer's Locomotion

Good game visually and train wise but just doesn't live up to being either business or transportation industry simulator

User Rating: 6 | Chris Sawyer's Locomotion PC

By Colonel_here | Review Date: January 26, 2007

Locomotion is a good game. It got good enough graphics to look at and there are many details such as variation in looks of transportation, growth cycles of the farms, change of buildings with the time period. The music also changes with the time period and there is way to control it to play what you want. The game has nice variety of environments and scenario editor is available. The amount of the transportation vehicles is also large. You have trams, buses, trains, aircrafts, ships. There is wide selection of roads and bridges. The time span of the game is roughly a century and with a bit. You start out in 1900 and while can end playing by 2100 the innovations stop after 2004. There is a wide amount of industries to transport things from and too. They also have their own unqie layouts making every transportation connection unique. There is even inflation in the game and industries do open and shut down however there is no logical reasoning behind the shut down of most of the industries, they occur randomly.
However the problems in this game are just huge it fails as transportation industry simulator because apparently everything except trains is just waste of time to use. Trains can do most task better than any other vehicle. This turns the game into Railway transportation simulator. Passenger AI is stupid and they get out on the next station from which they boarded thus they have no real logical destination in mind. Goods could be transported to same places without any limit on how much those industries or towns can absorb the goods.
The opponents can be easily sabotaged by blocking their transportation routes.
The game has problems with reality, the ability to build some projects is impossible to accomplish in real life.
In business simulation it barely approaches any type of business simulation with very limited likeness to the real business environment. The loans are useless after 5 game years. Profits are either too high or cost are too low. There re no real demand and supply relationship except needed requirements of number of big buildings before the endless amount of goods can be damped there. There are no contracts from industries to do the transporting and financing industry has no real advantages such as exclusive rights or dividends payed.
There are problems with airports and how to place them and expand them which a far cry from reality.
The game is addictive at first but than all the problems come out and so it turns into disappointment. I outlines the specifics on my blog in several parts all titled Locomotion. (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/index.php?user=Colonel_here)
I strongly suggest reading reviews form various sources about the game and trying the demo first before buying it.

Chris Sawyer's Locomotion

Good game visually and train wise but just doesn't live up to being either business or transportation industry simulator

I really tried to like this game, but it just won't go...

Not a worthy successor to Transport Tycoon