CHRIS SAWYER’S LOCOMOTION

The thoughs of steam-power-aholic Paul Varley on what's billed as the sequel to the classic game Transport Tycoon

Introduction

You may remember Chris Sawyer, the one-man design and programming team behind such games as Transport Tycoon and, more recently, the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. Well, in Locomotion he’s come steaming back with what’s been billed as the long-awaited sequel to Transport Tycoon (although, if you called Transport Tycoon Deluxe TT2, this would make Locomotion TT3). I'm not 100% sure how to review this game - either purely as a sequel to Transport Tycoon, or as a game in it's own right. I think I'll try to do both.

I owned the original Transport Tycoon, although I never owned Deluxe. It was a DOS game, and my computer at the time had its own little quirks when running DOS games, most noticably an absence of sound and music. My impression of the first game was pretty much "great fun, if a little repetitive after a while". The objective of the original was to build up a transportation empire over 100 years, by delivering passengers and cargo from location to location quickly and efficiently.

Locomotion opens up the options a little. Instead of just having the 100 year slog to go for, there are a variety of scenarios of different difficulties to try your hand at (some of the hardest being variations on the old "100-year-challenge" thing). With each scenario there is a given goal, be it deliver a certain amount of cargo, achieve certain company worths or profit margins, and so on.

Anyway, time to begin the review proper:

Substance

Substance for me is all about how solid, well designed and enjoyable a game is. It covers a large area: playability, addictiveness, learning curve, longevity, replay value, and so on. Here, Locomotion has a habit of delighting and frustrating in equal measure.

Possibly the biggest example of the dual nature of Locomotion comes with one of the first things you'll have to face as a player: the road and track laying systems. These systems are wonderfully powerful and flexible, if you know exactly what it is you want them to do. The elegant curves of a well-laid piece of Locomotion track are far more realistic and satisfying than the sharp 45 degree angle turns of Transport Tycoon, and bridges and tunnels may be constructed on slopes, round curves and all over the place, a big improvement on the old "they must be in a straight line" system. The price for this is that if you aren't entirely sure what you need, you can get into all sorts of trouble building your track, costing you far more money than you anticipated. After a while I got use to it, but it can be a little off-putting.

One problem that doesn't look too bad at first, but grows exponentially with playing, is the lack of depots. TT veterans will recall that one built and maintained one's vehicles in depots and then dispatched them to the various stops and stations en route. Locomotion gets rid of the depots and lets you place your vehicles straight into the fray. It's quicker, yes, and you don't have to dispatch your vehicles to depots every time you want to replace them, but taking out the depots means removing the ability to provide your vehicles with maintainance. This means that, instead of having their reliability topped up by regular depot visits, your vehicles rapidly decline into a state of low reliability, leading to breakdowns, customer boycotts, and so on. Now say you have fifty-odd trams (as I often do), and they last about 7 or 8 years before they become unacceptably unreliable. You're going to spend most of your time selling and buying trams and not enough time expanding your empire. The inability to provide maintainance is arguably Locomotion's one truly inexcusable failing.

The AI is kinda weird and sometimes you wonder if it must be using some sort of money cheat, because it's always constructing these highly daring rail networks (Multiple bridges spanning the Irish Sea, anyone?). It can be amusing to watch, but a little unnerving, particularly if, like me, you start a bit cautiously.

But I'll stop being negative now. Locomotion captures the same essential charm as the originat Transport Tycoon. Some would argue that it's too much like TT, and that in the ten year gap between the games not enough has improved. My basic stance with computer games has always been that originality isn't of the utmost importance: if a copy of a good game is still a good game, then that's all I ask for.

There are some new features in Locomotion, most notably the aforementioned trams, which provide an excellent and cost-effective way of providing intra-city passenger transport. I find when I play the game that trams provide my bread-and-butter income, and they're a valuable addition to the game. You'll be interested to learn that planes can now carry things other than passengers and mail if you use the Refit command on them. The railway engines and rolling stock are now all of varying lengths, so if you have short platforms for a particular line, it may be worth picking a Jinty over that Gresley A3, even though the latter's faster and more powerful, simply because the former's smaller. The rolling stock now has maximum speeds too, so you may wish to think twice about using a fast engine to haul those coal trucks when they can only go at 50mph.

Style

It's been remarked by other reviewers that Locomotion's graphics could have been done ten year ago, and it's certainly true that the game's graphics bear an overwhelming resemblence to its predecessor. This doesn't really bother me. I have no real problem with basic graphics where basic graphics do the job just as well as fancy ones. There is an argument that the buildings look very static and dull, and maybe the Locomotion artist should have taken a leaf out of the SimCity 4 artists' book. But there are some really nice extras. For example, the locomotives look far more like their real-world counterparts, so there's an extra thrill in watching those little "Jinty" 3Fs or powerful Stanier Coronation Pacifics at work (If you recall the TT locos, it was impossible to tell the difference between most of them - only the Jinty, the pannier tank and the A4 stood out).

Stylistically, the various scenarios are set in three main game styles: British, North American and European. This governs what vehicles, buildings, industries, etc. you'll see. Being a Brit of course, I get the biggest kick out of the British-themed scenarios (and watching all the various British locos go about their business). Some of the maps are replicas of real world places, such as the American Midwest, or the Swiss Alps. One thing that annoys me about the Great Britain and Ireland map is that Swansea, the city I live in, isn't on the map. Cardiff's there, as are Fishguard, Aberystwyth and Welshpool (all a lot smaller than Swansea), but no Swansea. What gives?

Music and sound is an interesting one for me, as I personally cannot compare it with my TT-playing days because of my computer's aforementioned habit of running DOS games with the sound turned off. So I can listen with fresh ears. Well, let's see. Unless you set the music to "random", the music depends on what era you're in. The problem is that the Ragtime music of the 1900s and 1910s. This doesn't sound bad at first, but most of the tunes sound very similar to each other and after 20 simulation years stuck with them, it really does start to grind. The other option is, of, course, random - but then you can look forward to techno in the 1930s, or big band numbers in the 1990s. Having said all that, the music overall is pretty good, and the theme tune when you start the game is excellent. The sound is a little like the graphics - it's nothing amazing, but it's perfectly adequate for the job and it's pretty realistic.

Overall

I know I've pointed out many flaws in the game with this review, but I just can't bring myself to dislike it. Maybe it's because I'm a commited railway enthusiast, or the game's pedigree, or something, but I really do find the game fun to play. I am kinda torn for a rating to give it. My heart says 8, my head says 6. I'll go with 7.

Rating: 7.0