Pardon Me Boy - Is This the Pennsylvania Station?
Written: Oct 15 '99 (Updated May 13 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Real-time, challenging strategy game
Cons: Obsessive and time-intensive; not for people who sleep
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| mshawpyle's Full Review: Railroad Tycoon 2 for Windows |
RRTII has now been joined by the expansion pack, Railroad Tycoon: The Second Century (which is available stand-alone at under $20, and available bundled with RRTII for rather more; RRT:TSC cannot be installed and played without the original, RRTII). Between the two, a gaming experience of considerable quality is available.
Now, this won't be everybody's cup of tea; there is no way to inject gratuitous sex and violence into railroading, and that, alas, is a fairly common attraction. This is a strategy game, and a business strategy game at that. (The difference between strategy and tactics, in gaming, is best summed up in an interchange I had with an office intern who, like many of his generation, is 'into' first-person shooters: 'I'm not interested,' I said, 'in being point man for a squad; I want to command a corps, at least.')
In economic terms, this is an army-group command level game, putting you in the shoes of the chairman of one of the great railroading concerns of history. So? Well, to paraphrase Mel Brooks, 'It's good to be the robber baron.' After a miserable day of middle management, it's fun to make billions. Or to lose them with no consequences except in game terms. For you will lose them, easily: you have to contend with market forces, the James Gang, and shareholders no easier to please than a two year old. But the game is obsessive, and the more so as it is purely real-time.
The stand-alone scenarios are challenging and enjoyable; but it is the campaign games that can really hook you. RRT:TSC - the expansion pack - has brought this to a 20th Century level, with new, fast (and hideously expensive) rolling stock, metro-rail scenarios, and a whole new campaign that includes the Second World War (Mussolini, your train is now late; and try keeping a schedule during the London Blitz!) and speculative scenarios based on futuristic technology.
It also adds such new industries (and that is what produces what you haul to make money) as weapons factories and distilleries (mine keeping popping up in Kentucky and Milwaukee, for some reason).
What RRT really is, of course, is a chance to play with trains without being competent enough to put a model together in ten tries. And as with model railroading, you can talk all you want about its being just the thing for Junior; but it's Dad who'll be up until 0300, hogging it. One of the best recent strategy games in any category; Pop Top has a future, if this is their style from here on. (Maybe Shipping Tycoon next? It's good to be Ari Onassis....)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
mshawpyle
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Markham Shaw Pyle, JD
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 539
Trusted by: 391 members
About Me:
Historian, baseballing bon vivant, Boll Weevil, W&L man; and the Walter Mitty of field sports
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