Train Collection
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Strategy First Developer: Strategy First Media: CD/3 Players: 1 - 8 (Rails Across America) Genre: Strategy/ Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: Train Collection comes bundled with two very distinct games as well as a locomotive customization kit for one of them. Rails Across America is a straightforward continental strategy game that presents things in a top down 2D format. Though this view is detailed enough to allow you to play the game, it can get a little dull to look at. Thankfully though, colorful menus and pictures are constantly being thrown your way to offer that aesthetic appeal. Trainz Ultimate Collection, on the other hand, puts you in the engine car of a locomotive and lets you view the wonderfully detailed countryside. There is definitely a lot more variety in this game than in Rails. The sound is nothing stunning, but it does enough to get by. The music for both games fits their respective themes, as do the multitude of sound effects. This aspect is more important in Trainz than in Rails, as you'll be hearing a lot more ambient sound from the chugging of the engine in the former. Yet Rails does offer some decent music to accompany those pretty menus and pictures.
Gameplay: As I said before, these are two very distinct games. Rails Across America lets you build a locomotive empire across the United States in a time period from 1830 to 2020. The historically accurate scenarios in it require you to construct an empire by paying attention the vast number of little things the world of trains has to offer, like labor unions and transportation choke points. This hardcore strategy game is much broader than other train company sims like Railroad Tycoon. In it you must build tracks, stations, and cities, amassing fortune and fame along the way. You can also take the game online with up to 8 players playing simultaneously in a very real time, very fluid, and very cutthroat world. Trainz Ultimate Collection, on the other hand, lends a more hands on approach to the actual train itself. This is a straightforward train sim at its heart. You will learn more than you ever wanted to know about trains and how they work from this piece of software. The missions you play are all goal based, meaning you have to transport some type of cargo to some place in a certain amount of time, and it's up to you to decide which routes and which locomotives you will use in order to get there. Trainz also offers another great take on the whole genre. It not only allows you to drive trains yourself, but it lets you create the world in which you will drive them. From a grid screen you can lay down just about any type of geographic feature imaginable, including mountains, rivers, canyons, forests, and train tracks, and then take a joyride along them and see the sites you have created.
Difficulty: Rails Across America does suffer from some major non-intuitiveness. First of all, the instruction manual gives you a very poor description of how the actual mechanics of the game work. There is no tutorial mission, and the amount of charts and info thrown at you can be overwhelming. Only those with enough patience will get any reward out of this game. On the other side of the tracks, things are much different. The only real difficult part of Trainz Ultimate Collection is when you have to create your world, which will require the constant assistance of the instruction manual. This feature is hard to get the hang of, but definitely not impossible to use, and offers great replay value.
Game Mechanics: Rails Across America works a little bit differently than other strategy games of its kind. Instead of winning by amassing the largest sum of money, you claim victory by earning the most prestige. This is usually calculated by the size of your empire, but this is never made clear in the instruction book or in the game. This feature makes it possible for underdogs in debt to quickly rise to the top at the end of the game, causing for some very competitive matches. There is also an obsessive amount of micromanagement that you must attend to, but any hard core strategist will not be daunted by this. In Trainz Ultimate Collection, controlling the train is basically as simple as driving a car. There is a lot to it, but once you learn the ropes it's only a matter of how far you can take your skills. A major flaw with Trainz, however, is its instability. I suffered from an abnormal amount of crashing to desktop, and the installation was a little harrowing. Train Collection has something to offer everyone. Whether you're in the mood for a very complex sim, or you want to enjoy a leisurely romp around the countryside in a steam engine, you'll find what you're looking for. Trainz Paint Shed will also extend the life of Trainz a bit by letting you customize your very own locomotive, right down to the logos on the side. Despite all the flaws that come packed in with the rest of the stuff, there is definitely more good than bad that comes out of this compilation.
-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications AKA Andrew Horwitz
Minimum System Requirements: 400 MHz Processor, 128 MB RAM, 16 MB Video Card, DirectX Sound Card   Test System: Windows XP, 1.4GHz AMD Athlon, GeForce FX 128 MB video card, 40 gig hard drive, 56x CD-ROM, 256MB DDR Ram, Sound Blaster Live! sound card, Cable Modem Internet connection
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