Trainz

Relatively recently, I noticed an eye-catching program on TV. (I have not used the TV for years, so I can only notice something in it, just ...) It was a kind of compilation of reports from road accidents, mostly shot from amateur or police cameras. While the latter usually documented the death or the beginning of the disability of the victims they chased (read: criminals), who would have no reason to flee if they were not chased, :-), the casual amateurs experienced much more diverse events. In one of these videos, a huge 18-wheel truck stuttered at a railroad crossing. A speeding transcontinental train, an order of magnitude larger than a car, broke the truck in half despite strenuous attempts to slow it down and pushed it the length of the field, breaking the trees and poles it passed. There was even no danger of the train derailing - just a speeding elephant tripped over an ant.

Trains are the largest land means of transport known to us today - they do not quite match their weight and strength to any of the others. But it is not only their size that has attracted boyish imaginations for two hundred years - they themselves, together with the thousands of kilometers of tracks inherent in them, together with the enormous infrastructure and economic base, constitute an internal state in each country. Thanks to this, they not only create a separate world with their own magic, but also a kind of powerful power - a possible strike of railwaymen can paralyze the life and economy of the entire country. Only the shutdown of the power plant can have a similar effect. Yet you don't have to reach that far to feel great power at your service. A simple driver at the bottom of the hierarchy drives a machine that often surpasses not only human capacity to harness power, but even perception. Not since the parade, the Railway Code contains a clause releasing the driver from the obligation to brake in front of a man lying on the tracks - he will not be able to stop the machine on time anyway, and in this case the life of hundreds of passengers is more important than the life of one suicide. Moreover, in the event of a fatal accident, the driver is entitled to a sick leave to regulate the psyche, and this is where his responsibility for human life (for life not on the train) ends. Railroad works on the imagination in many ways and each of us, who does not play with dolls, usually got a queue when we were young. Mostly because Dad wanted to play with her ...

The electric train, however, is not such a cool toy. First of all, it takes up a lot of space - in practice, a separate room with no other uses is useful. If, however, in our M3, even while sitting at the computer, we have to hold the cat on our lap and listen to the endless telephone conversations between my sister and friends, a sister who has nowhere to be thrown away - then we need to fold the queue when everyone goes and fold it before they come back and they will spread it around the apartment on slippers. This is where the curtain comes up and "Trainz" comes on stage. The game by all means unusual, almost supernaturally addictive, especially that it does not contain the game element as such. Moreover, it is not devoid of many shortcomings, which, however, are strangely easy to forgive. The official website of the game greets you with the slogan: "a child's dream came true" and in fact, this short statement includes everything that will take me at least a few paragraphs ...

Digression: writing this review, I listen to the radio. I have just found out that the period of "black pedagogy" developed by the Germans 150 years ago is coming to an end (or is over - I am inattentively listening ...). It is about the technique of fighting with your own children :-) consisting in intimidating them (Heinrich, brothers Grimm etc.) - I am not entirely convinced of its end, especially since my own child also knows very well what Bobo is and in what situations appears. But something else about this information captivated me - well, God of spirit the guilty radio idiot managed to secretly connect the bullying of children with the cruelty of computer games, and thus with the "black pedagogy" developed by our hated, millennial enemies. Now I don't know what to think about the pregnancy that I am writing about. Maybe the whole game is about running over people and heaps of their massacred corpses stretching along the tracks on all continents ...? (OK, I'm starting to practice demagogy myself.)

Youthful and already aging in body, and not necessarily young in spirit - not to beat the bush: all lovers of steel beasts "Trainz" give their hands all the best and in sufficient quantities. Hundred of locomotives, wagons and various freight platforms, from which you can build any trains with practically no limitations in length - although for obvious reasons not every train can be moved. Any combination of wagons and locomotives is possible, including tapeworms pulled by several machines. Nothing prevents you from linking two locomotives together and checking which one turns out to be stronger. :-) In addition, you can download additional models from the game's website ... of everything that is moving or not in the game.

The refinement of individual models leaves something to be desired, because they could be more detailed, more detailed - this is for lovers of close-ups with hot bodies. The game, however, is no longer the latest date, and as such it looks really decent. The more so because, apart from the trains rushing on the tracks, we can admire a large number of objects located on the terrain-models: houses, industrial plants, cities, trees, bushes, bridges; also cars moving according to local law - in Australia and England on the left, in the States on God's side.

By far the most male taste is ... sounds. A separate set of them for different locomotives allows everyone to choose the music that best suits them. I particularly recommend the bass roar of the warming up diesel, gradually rising to the higher tones, without haste, with all due sublimity - let Mozart hide. But the machine, ready to go, still needs to be moved from the platform. There are two basic approximations of reality: transformer mode and more elegant controls. While the first mode is good at the beginning, because every child can use the tension knob, it is much more enjoyable to take a seat in the virtual driver's seat and release power on a slightly more complicated path. Here I have to admit that without looking at the manual (otherwise very good) I could not move the line-up. Brakes like that, bang and stuff, a switch, a throttle, a flow tank, an expansion tank, a brake cylinder ... And if you manage to do it, it's a pity to leave the game.

The engine shifts to higher gears with each successive degree of throttle opening, moreover, a speeding heavy train cannot be slowed down at all in a reasonable time, and if you try to stop it too hard, it is ready to derail. Similarly, it is worth adhering to the prescribed speed limits - otherwise we may be in for an unpleasant, although visually attractive surprise on the first too sharp curve.

God forbid, I don't want to scare anyone and send them to the railway technical school before starting the game. If someone does not like that the train weighs an awful lot and you have to take it into account, the realism is limited even below the level of the children's electric train. And much below. Switching the control to transformer mode causes the machines in the game to behave like toys that can be handled - they accelerate immediately and brake just as quickly. Additionally, preventing the trains from derailing means that even an immediate inclusion of the voltage to the resistance will not result in an effective rollover. (And I used to have such a transformer that I could derail any locomotive almost without moving it. :-) Which also amused me the most.)

However, when the train is already derailed, the locomotive will fall from the bridge into the river and the engine will go silent, then you can hear that not only the engine did buuuu, but the tuk-tuk wheels - here and there you can hear birds chirping, and from the road you can hear the noise of moving cars . And yet all this richness of scenery can not only be heard but also watched. In addition to the view from the cabin, the player has the opportunity to observe the train from external cameras, from cameras set by default at all switches and turntables, and from independent cameras placed on the mock-up, whose task is to independently, fully automatically track trains moving in their vicinity. All this is just very cool and what can I write a lot about.

Together with the game, we get our hands on three prepared mock-ups and ... it's not too much. Each of them, however, illustrates a different part of the globe: hot Australia, the industrial and agricultural United States and the familiar surroundings of Great Britain. The fantastic terrain editor attached to the game comes in handy, allowing you to design a model from scratch, or as a variation of the existing one, or combine several areas into one, larger one. The whole design takes place on a living model, on which cars move and over which the player moves by bird's flight in a natural and comfortable way. Admittedly, this editor feels bad for me and likes to log into the system without permission, but well ... he is so handsome that he can be forgiven for some shortcomings in his character.

The last module of "Trainz" is an encyclopaedic list of all available locomotives and wagons with their detailed description. All models are presented in an empty depot, ready to be viewed from all sides and in any close-up.

At the beginning I mentioned a few shortcomings in the game. The most serious of them - although not affecting the realism of the driving itself - is the complete absence of collisions between everything and everything. With one exception: as long as the train is a single train, the coupled wagons interact as expected. But that's it. A tanker overturned on the tracks can be passed with impunity - better: penetrate. The same is true of derailed city trains, as they are stopped by friction and gravity, but not by concrete walls; and the locomotive standing across the road is no obstacle for just any Fiat. Of course, this underdevelopment is intentional, because after all, it is not a derailment simulator, but train driving, and the production time of the game must be finished. In addition to such deficiencies there is also the sound accompanying the crossover, which breaks in a semitone, as well as a few minor effects that do not sound naturally. But never mind - you have to listen to the sound of the engines, and they play, oh, they play ...

Despite this and that, despite the lack of collapsing walls and smashed cars on the tracks, and despite the tendency of the terrain editor to jump into the system, "Trainz" is a fantastic game and gives a lot of pleasure resulting from driving steel giants by hand. It may be a pity that in this simulator there are no even small elements that can be checked in battle - a kind of mission to perform - just transport something from place to place in the required time, breaking as few rules as possible on the way ... We all sat down the electric train. Well, but it is difficult - there is no - and it is interesting without it. In addition, the native translation of "Trainz" is very good, that is natural and thus unobtrusive, which is of great importance especially in the realistic game mode, for which naming is crucial. So ... it's worth having "Trainz" at home. I think every player has experienced the uncomfortable feeling more than once that they would play something for themselves without really knowing what. And this is where "Trainz" comes into play, because traveling by train is always nice, and you can spend a quarter or a half day before this game.

Shuck