Thanks to GameTap (not a shill), I was able to play Railrood Tycoon for a bit last night. Well, when I say ‘play’, I mean complete the tutorials. I was a huge fan of the first two, but because of whatever MMORPG was out at the time, I never bought the third one.
That said, I find the 3-d in this game very distracting. I know you can zoom in and out and rotate and all the funky cool features, but it seemed like even in my brief time with the title, I was too busy playing with and adjusting the camera to appreciate the nuances of the game itself.
I’m not done with the title since it is in essence free (well, $10/month for it and the other 200 titles), but how did everyone else feel about this? Am I just a slow curmudgeon or was this a distraction for anyone else?
I never understood the point of the shift to 3D. As far as I’m concerned, RRT2 was the best game in the series (although I have very fond memories of the original as well). The move to 3D always struck me as an admission that the developers couldn’t find anything more compelling to do with the strategy, or they were competing with Microsoft Train Simulator, or both.
I thoroughly enjoyed it! The 3D is just eye candy so fairly non-essential but it was a good game overall, with a much more sophisticated economy in many ways than RT2. Also the reduction in micromanagement with the autoselection of cars was a nice move.
It just never grabbed me like the previous one did. I played RRT2 to death, but RRT3 couldn’t hold my interest despite multiple attempts spaced out over several months. The 3D aspect seemed to be part of the problem, but it’s hard to nail down – it reminded me of how the 3D Rollercoaster Tycoon just felt a little “meh” compared to the original.
I like the idea of a 3D train game but the next direction I’d like to see is something that merges the MSTS/Trainz 1st person train driver approach with the RRT build approach.
For instance, I would like to see a game in which you start out with a 100% to scale 3D terrain map that you have to build a rail line from point A to point B. You would then go in and lay out the line exactly where you wanted to build it and the tracks would slowly get built. At that point you would purchase one or two engines and a few freight cars and personally be able to drive the train through your route. Next, you could hire engineers and firemen and have them run the train while you concentrate on building your route from B to C and managing consists.
This would be a much more realistic small scale approach to railroad building. I gather than Trainz may allow you to do some parts of this but not all of them…specifically not the building portion.
Anybody know where the Trainz series stands right now? Originally, there was going to be a Railroad Tycoonesque add-on that sounded like it would turn it into more or less a strategy game. Is that still in the works or has it been released yet? I’d buy that in a heartbeat, as I love Trainz, although I haven’t messed with it for quite awhile now.
The tunnels and all the slope types made RT3 more interesting to me. Automanaging the consist was good too, tho the automanage never was as profitable as if you micromanaged, esp if you needed to carry certain loads to support your industries. Speaking of industries, many of the RT3 scenarios focused too much on industries IMO. I mean, I’m playing a train tycoon game…I don’t want to futz with owning a bunch of non related industries.
I also own Trainz, the slightly older version, not the newest they just released. It still a train sim, however, from what I get from thier adverts and website. I got it cheap, and my kids love it (6yo)
I enjoyed RCT3D very much and re-installed it recently to finally finish off the final scenarios. I enjoyed the challenges of each scenario and my only complaint was the AI wasn’t quite as competeitve as I would have liked. I was quite sad when I found out that was Phil Steinmeyer’s last hardcore pc game for the foreseeable future. I enjoyed the Tropico games too.
That being said, I do hope the 4th rendition coming out from Firaxis will be a return to the original Railroad Tycoon gameplay technique.
I remember seeing complaints that the economic model might be broken when RRT3 came out. Did that ever get fixed? I just reinstalled RRT2 a few days ago, but haven’t started playing yet. I’m wondering if I should get a copy of RRT3 instead?
