Sid Meier's Railroads!

Written by John Carswell  on October 30, 2006

Review: Sid Meier's Exclamation Points: destroying punctuation, one sentence at a time.

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As someone who grew up with Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, it's hard to not draw comparisons between that classic series and Sid Meier's Railroads! The short of it is that Railroads, while sharing much in common with the Tycoon series, is very much its own game. Accessible and addictive as it is deep and challenging, Railroads strikes a nice balance between being a hardcore economic simulator, and a train aficionado's playground.

There is no campaign mode stringing the game's missions together. Instead, Railroads offers a number of separate maps, each with chained scenarios that span a one-hundred year or so period. The game also includes enough sandbox/multiplayer maps and customization options to create matches that range from intense competition to laid-back track laying.

The core of Railroads, the scenario missions, are executed perfectly. Built around a three-tiered, time-based system, players must reach certain goals within a given time period after which point they are given new objectives. However, the objectives of each tier are visible from the beginning of the game so that players can plan ahead. Furthermore, failing to meet an objective will not end the game but simply subtract from the final score. As such, while the missions rarely require the player to rush, those not interested in working against the clock are allowed to enjoy Railroads at their own pace.

Difficulty settings are balanced to further accommodate different playing styles; each setting changes the overall experience without making it feel as though the player or the game is cheating. If you are looking to simply lay down a few tracks and watch your trains move around the countryside, Railroads can be tuned to act as if that were the sole function the game was built for. If you want AI players that are aggressively setting up stations in УyourФ cities while you are franticly managing an increasingly complex network of rails, Railroads will perfectly meet your needs as well.

The maps themselves are set in North America and Europe (along with a handful of fictional settings). There is an unfortunate absence of maps that cover a larger area such as the US and Europe maps in Railroad Tycoon 3 but the variety is otherwise decent. Littering the maps are populated areas (towns, cities, etc.) and natural resources (wood, coal, etc.). Your final objective is to build a successful company and connecting cities to one another, buying industries, and stimulating growth in smaller towns is the core of Railroads' gameplay.

There is something of a УgardeningФ system in place where the player's interaction creates major changes in an otherwise static world. For instance, there may be a large city next to a small mining village. The large city produces and demands tons of mail and passengers while the village only wants coal. The player can connect the village to a mine and begin to hauling rock until the village's economy is sufficiently stimulated to trigger growth. Having graduated to town status, the once-village now demands and products mail and passengers allowing for trade with the city.

Because of this system, even a few scattered villages hold tremendous potential for future profit. Over time, the map is covered in large cities with complex trade routes that see coal turned in steel, the steel turned into a marketable product, and that product carted away to a city that demands the product. The player can also purchase the industries involved in this growth which allows for extra income. A number of maps play off of this dynamic almost solely although the system plays a part in every game and caters to both competitive and relaxed gameplay.

When other railroad companies are involved, things become for tricky. Competing businesses may set up their own station at at a lumber mill the player was using which drains away some of the resources that were previously generating profits solely for the player. Additionally, since each industry is purchased via an auction, the competition will often place their own bids which raises the end price for the player or causes them to flat-out lose the industry.

Combine these two relatively simple concepts with maps that randomly generate industry and resource positioning and you have a surprisingly deep experience. There is also a tech tree present which occasionally creates new technologies for players to bid for to gain timed-exclusives to the new patent. As time passes, new trains are introduced and new technologies make those trains more efficient and profitable. While the player has no control over the tech tree, its presence keeps that gaming world fresh and deciding which patents to fight for lends the game an added strategic edge.

Although Railroads' could use a few more maps, the game's replay value is still very high. Each match plays out differently, the economic nuances take time to master, and the difficulty settings create a very multifaceted and tweakable gameplay experience. There are also options to randomly generate terrain and city location but since the placement appears to truly be random, one can end up with a map that has all of the cities clustered together, and a single city chaotically scattered across a mountain.

Graphically, Railroads is very attractive but marred by some slowdown. Throughout the game, players will be treated to some excellent animations. Every resource, station, and industry has its own detailed animations; sheep are sheared, passengers mill around the stations, car manufacturers spit out endless cars, etc. The game even makes slight changes based on the time period. For instance, bombs turn into missiles as technology progresses. Railroads' train are highly detailed, perfectly animated, and feature some surprisingly good smoke effects.

Unfortunately, the slowdown is nearly omnipresent and will occasionally render the game unplayable five to ten-seconds stretches. Also, a feature present in recent Sid Meier games - the ability to pull the camera up high enough to see the full map - is missing in Railroads. The camera's maneuverability in Railroads is more in line with your standard RTS which, while being fully workable, may be a disappointment for some Sid Meier fans.

As for Railroads' audio presentation, there is disappointingly little to say. Although the game offers a host of excellent ambient sounds and effects, you'll hear very little these once the camera is pulled back to a playable level. This would not be an issue were it not for the absence of background music in Railroads. The most recent Tycoon game created a nice atmosphere with the southern twang of its music so the absence of background music in Railroads is perplexing. As Railroads stands, there is just a void of auditory feedback broken only by the main menu and a few in-game announcements.