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Messages - hioo1

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1
TalkBack / Railway Empire 2 (Switch) Review
« on: July 05, 2023, 05:18:29 PM »

Head for the hills, the train station's on fire.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/64208/railway-empire-2-switch-review

As the resident train guy at Nintendo World Report, I was very excited when I heard that Railway Empire 2 was announced and coming to the Switch. Playing the original on the Switch, though it was released years after the PC version, was a great experience and scratched the recurring Railroad Tycoon itch. And now it was portable, which was even better! So when it finally came out, I made sure to jump on reviewing it.

Sadly the port of Railway Empire 2 to Switch is so buggy, it is basically unplayable. I was delaying writing the review in hopes of an update to make the game work correctly, but as of this writing, I haven’t seen an update. The big issue is that the game randomly crashes the system, requiring a hard reset. It happened twice during just the tutorial levels, which then pushed me to just try starting the campaign, and that then crashed in the first level after about 20 minutes in. Another, smaller issue with the tutorial is that at certain times, it would require you to place certain elements in a specific spot, but depending on how you laid your track previously, it would not allow you to lay that element. This wouldn’t be a problem, but the tutorial at this point doesn’t let you back out of that menu to fix the track’s placement, (which you could do in the normal game), requiring you to restart the tutorial level.

Aside from the initial bugs, the graphics are horrendous, in a way that makes this Switch port seem decades behind. I went back to the original game (running on the same exact Switch) just to make sure I wasn’t fooling myself, and while the graphics in the original game aren’t amazing, they are lightyears better than Railway Empire 2’s graphics on Nintendo’s hybrid.

The game has some bright spots, though I didn’t get to explore it too much because of the aforementioned glitches and crashes. The trackbuilding has been reworked to require less micromanaging, with improvements such as the station gridiron, which is a track element that includes a series of switches and a signal bridge going over parallel tracks that automatically direct trains into an empty spot at the station. This can be dropped as a single element in front of the station, instead of having to layout all the track switches manually. The game also makes it easier to signal and direct trains by automatically installing signals on parallel tracks. This should make it easier to focus on the more economic parts of the game, but truthfully I wasn’t able to play it enough to see if my theory was correct.

Overall, unless an update comes out to fix the glitches, either go buy the game on another platform or just go back to playing the original Railway Empire on Switch. With graphics the way they are, it probably is not worth the frustration of trying to get it to work. It is a shame as I see that they put work into improving the track laying system, but it just doesn’t look like they put work into the Switch port.


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TalkBack / Train Valley (Switch) Review
« on: July 28, 2022, 08:45:44 AM »

Build your track through the hills and valleys of Train, uh, Valley.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/61084/train-valley-switch-review

Train Valley is a railroad-themed puzzle/strategy game, originally released on Steam in 2015 but making its way to Switch (and other consoles) in 2022. You are tasked with building an optimal railroad network between different predetermined cities. Trains pop up at these cities and then need to be sent through your network to their destination city by controlling switches and telling the trains when to stop and go. Getting in your way is the in-game cost of creating track as well as the timing dilemma of avoiding train crashes. Overall, this feels similar to similar railroad train-routing puzzle games, like Conduct Together, but with the added bonus of being able to control the track layout yourself.

The game has two general types of play in Classic and Sandbox. In Classic mode, you work through five different maps through five different seasons: Europe (1830–1980), America (1840–1960), USSR (1880–1980), Japan (1900–2020), and Germany (1830-2020). Each map has specific objectives you need to beat before the next map opens up to you. Each season also has a sixth randomly generated map for a distinct challenge. Most maps have three objectives, varying from earning a certain amount of money to not crashing any trains or paying under a certain amount to place track, while also playing under a 5-10 minute time limit and not running out of money. In Sandbox mode, you can build tracks to your heart’s content, without worrying about money or time, but you still need to deliver the trains to their destinations.

You start every map with two or three stations in place, each with a different color-coded symbol above them. When a train generates at that station, it shows up with a colored icon above it for its destination station. You then build tracks between its origin station and its destination station. Take too long doing this and the train will dispatch, causing havoc on the railroad. Rinse and repeat at an escalating scale. The networks you make ultimately will be how you succeed, so it’s integral to have a plan for the general traffic flow.

In Classic mode, you have a starting budget for each scenario, gaining more money by delivering trains correctly. The value of each train drops the longer you take, incentivizing quick thinking. Things get more complicated as you try to build track over difficult terrain, demolish obstacles, and optimize your track. As you progress through the ages, the trains go from old steam locomotives to diesel and electric trains, getting faster and pulling more cars, adding more variables to layout and how to properly set up stretches where trains pass each other. It was a fun coincidence that when playing this game, I was coming up against similar issues while designing and building my model railroad in the attic!

For controls, it uses the L and R buttons to toggle between five different modes: Junction, Track Build, Demolish, Dispatch, and Train. When in a mode, you can use the left control stick to select what you want to interact with. In Junction mode for instance, you jump between all the different junctions, which is how you control the ways the train goes through the switch; in Track mode, you use the control stick to move along the track and select where to build out from. This theme goes on to the other modes, so it can become difficult to keep track (heh, a pun) of what mode you are in when controlling multiple trains. One thing that helped me immensely was discovering you can interact with everything when you pause, so you can use that downtime to line up your switches, then dispatch your train without having the total chaos of a game like Conduct Together. It still feels a bit clunky but when you have time to plan things out with the pause button, it becomes much easier.

One thing I wish the game did better was the tutorial. It worked well for basic track laying and train operation, but it glossed over some things that would be useful to know. These things include (but aren’t limited to) being able to use the pause button to plan out routes, that there is a gauge in the lower right corner that shows when the next train will generate, and where the time clock is (there is a bar that goes from left to right under the date). I didn’t even figure out that last one until I was writing the review; there were just a few times that the game ended and I was confused why.

The visuals are a bit basic, with an unmoving, almost top-down view, but it works in context of the game. The locomotives seem to be inspired by real locomotives, but are fairly generic. They fit with their region, which adds an element of historical accuracy even if it isn’t as refined and detailed.

Train Valley is a fun train-routing puzzle game with a dash of strategy thrown in courtesy of the ability to construct your own rail network. It feels like a mashup of Conduct Together with the train routing of something like Mini Metro, where you are constantly connecting stations together and finding the optimal routes. The addition of the pause mechanic makes the game much more relaxing and less hectic, and is great to get a short train-puzzle fix. The more in-depth economic railroad simulations might be my ideal speed, but this was a fun break from them and I enjoyed my ride through Train Valley.


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TalkBack / A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism
« on: March 31, 2021, 07:45:41 AM »

A train leaves Tokyo going 65 km/h, when will it get to Osaka? If this was your favorite math problem, boy do I have a game for you!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56724/a-train-all-aboard-tourism

A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism is the latest in a largely Japan-only series of business simulation games where you are put in charge of a railway company in Japan and tasked with running a successful company. You do this not just by expanding your railroad throughout the city, but also by managing subsidiaries, playing the stock market, and as the name of the game would indicate, helping develop the city to be more attractive to tourists. Now this game would seemingly check multiple check marks for me (my title at Nintendo World Report is currently “Train Guy”), as my favorite types of games are railroad and city building simulations, but I had a hard time getting into this one.

A-Train is a long-running Japanese railroad simulation series that has a hard time finding a footing in the US. It’s based on how rail lines developed in post-war Japan, in addition to a state-owned railway system. Private railways were given business opportunities and real estate along their rail lines to encourage the development of new ones. This allowed the railroads to create planned communities that would rely on their railroads and bus systems for transportation. Many of these railroads developed tourist attractions along their rail lines, with railroads owning the Tokyo Skytree, baseball teams, and even owning a stake in Tokyo Disneyland. These diversified holdings allow these private passenger railroads to be very profitable, unlike in the rest of the world

A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism uses the idea of developing the town around the railroad as its central idea, with you building subsidiaries such as amusement parks, hotels, or residential towers around your stations to create more demand for the railroad. In this iteration there are even tourist attractions that draw tourists from other cities and are often an objective to winning a scenario. Each scenario takes place in a different city, at a different time period with different objectives that can involve anything from having a certain amount of profit to growing the city to a certain size to transporting a certain amount of tourists. There are eight scenarios in the game (including two tutorial scenarios), but you can actually make your own scenarios, upload them to other players and download their scenarios. There are also three levels of difficulty: Easy, Standard, and Expert.

Now as a business simulation, this is a fairly complex one. You have to juggle running the railroad, running your bus system, developing real estate, buying and selling land, buying and selling stocks (not just your company either), managing subsidiaries, managing deals with the city, and selling freight to other cities. As you can see, it can be a lot. All of this sounds stressful but much of it just needs you to check back every once and a while. You access most of this info from a series of icons on the left of the screen, which bring you to more menus where you can see breakdowns of profits and such. I noticed I tended to just access those from the touch screen, but it could also be accessed by hitting the B button and then scrolling through your options. Aside from all this, the railroad and network is where you will likely spend most of your time.

Managing the railroad is the heart of any railroad sim, and this game has some interesting concepts but can make the basics of managing your train and bus fleets frustrating. A-Train, as opposed to others like Transport Tycoon or Railway Empire, uses a schedule-based system for managing the vehicles, not a signal-based system. And since this is a more commuter train style simulation, it makes a certain amount of sense. You first go through and lay out the course the vehicle will make, with buses you would just designate the bus stops you want and with trains you can tell it which way you want it to go when it approaches a switch. You then need to schedule the vehicle to depart the station at a certain time, tell it how long to wait until doing another loop, and how many loops it should do in a day.

This system is fine for simple track systems but becomes very tough when trying to guess how long a train will take to make it through the whole system, especially if it encounters another train on the way. You end up having to guess at how long the loop will take and if you get it wrong, and the train could get back late and will then just wait for its next departure time, which could be hours away. And in a busy train station that means it will hold up many of your other trains.

I had a hard time adapting to this in the tutorials as the only other thing keeping the trains from running into each other (they don’t run into each other, just both stop and then you have to pick one up and drop it again, just like my model trains!), is a vague setting called “train intervals” (set it to four, the largest distance), where a train will stop a certain distance away from a stopped train. This doesn’t work all the time, especially when there is track crossover right before a station. It becomes frustrating when you have to pick up the train and drop it down somewhere else (that also costs money). If they had some kind of signal system, where I could put a signal right before the cross over, holding the train there until the other train leaves, it would be much less of a headache. This forces you to really look at the schedules to make sure the trains aren't going to be at stations at similar times.

Graphics-wise, it's nothing to be too impressed with, but it's also a business sim so that's not really where the meat of the game is. There are two camera views you can switch between: Isometric, which gives you a more traditional SimCity look at the game, and Free, which allows you to move the camera in any direction. You can also go for a ride in your train or bus, but with the graphics the way they are, it is more of a gimmick than anything else. Even with these graphics, the game crashed for me a few times, so make sure you turn the auto save on, and make sure to save after completing a big expansion. I found out the hard way my auto save wasn’t on and lost a couple hours of work.

Overall, once you get past the issues, it can be an in-depth and fun game to play for a rail simulation enthusiast, but those issues can be tough to overcome and take a lot of trial and error if you want to build more complex routes. It has a tough learning curve even with the tutorials. Some of this may just be me coming from another style of play but I actually had to restart the tutorial a couple of times until I got the hang of how the routing and scheduling system worked so I could design my tracks properly, but now that I have the hang of it, I’ll probably continue playing it.


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TalkBack / Re: Railway Empire (Switch) Review
« on: June 25, 2020, 04:31:40 PM »
Since I wrote the review, I've been playing it a bit more this week and over the weekend, and it hasn't crashed once since the official launch, not sure if its because I haven't been pushing it as much (needed to get in some Animal Crossing time) or there was an update I didn't notice. But I'll keep everyone updated if it happens more.

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TalkBack / Railway Empire (Switch) Review
« on: June 19, 2020, 12:00:00 AM »

On the right track.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/54099/railway-empire-switch-review

Railway Empire is a tycoon simulation game, where you build a railroad network across the United States, connecting cities and industries and making sure your trains are running properly while trying to stave off the competition. This formula may be familiar to some, as it is largely influenced by the Railroad Tycoon series from the 1990s and early 2000s. I’m not your usual reviewer at Nintendo World Report. I was called in to tackle Railway Empire because I am a lifelong rail fan as well as a video game fan. I was curious to see if this new release could scratch my ever-present railroad game itch.  Railway Empire was originally released for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 back in 2018. Now it’s out on Switch and overall, I was impressed.

Billy Brown and Trains

The basic premise starts you as a railroad baron attempting to make a fortune in the 19th and early 20th century United States. Different options greet you at the outset, such as a tutorial-like campaign that loosely follows major railroad events of the 1800s. Scenarios add more complexity but also more variety. Multiple maps that add in Mexico and South America are included here, tying into some real history. Free Play gives you the keys to the kingdom, letting you make custom games in any time period with any amount of competitors that generate some general goals for you. The final mode is Sandbox, which is great if you don’t care about the economy at all and just want to run trains without worrying about the competition.

If you start with the campaign, you don’t necessarily go in chronological order. You start by building the Union Pacfic Railroad across the great plains and into the rocky mountains. Short video clips show you how to lay track correctly and how the menu items work. I found these very helpful as I’m not used to playing this type of game on a console, but once I learned how to use the radial menu, laying track and creating trains grew to be fairly intuitive.

Railway Empire on Switch

One of the cool aspects of Railway Empire is it gives you two (or really three) different options for building track: normal and realistic. Normal is similar to how trains were in the Railroad Tycoon games, where the trains will simply “pass through” each other on the same track. Selecting realistic makes it so you end up having a system similar to Transport Tycoon, where trains cannot occupy the same “block” of track and requires more complex track plans and signals to allow your trains to move efficiently and not clog up the line. There is also a third option, which is called Normal AI. That gives the AI players the easier track layouts while the player has to use the Realistic mode, basically acting as an additional difficulty level for the player. I’m an old Transport Tycoon player so I was typically playing with Realistic mode.

Railway Empire on Switch

The track laying worked well, with a few exceptions. You click an area and then the game figures out the easiest way between the two points, creating bridges and tunnels as needed. This usually ends up with the most expensive but flattest route, which is good for the trains but not necessarily your pocket book. Luckily, it doesn’t immediately build the route, but shows you how much it will cost before you approve it, so you can redo the route if you want it to. For example, instead of digging a $1 million tunnel, you can wind through the mountains by creating multiple points closer together. What you lose in efficiency, you gain in savings. For parallel tracks, the game typically realises what you are doing and automatically puts them next to each other for you. Now one of my nitpicks for this is that while it is easy to create parallel tracks, it is sometimes hard to integrate switches into the track. That is necessary when you try to make a passing siding into a full double track main line. In this case, sometimes you might have to delete a good amount of the side track before relaying the second track. Once I learned this trick, it became just a small annoyance and the game doesn’t punish you much for it by giving you a decent amount of money back when you delete tracks and buildings.

One of the more troubling parts of Railway Empire was the consistent crashing I experienced in the Switch version. With regularity, the game would crash once every few hours. Rarely was it game-wrecking thanks to frequent auto saves, but I did lose considerable progress once. I’m not sure exactly what causes the issue, but if it’s left unremedied, it might make the longevity of the Switch release hampered.

Railway Empire on Switch

Now what kind of railfan would I be if I didn’t talk about the trains? The game does well with the accuracy of the train engines, with all of them seemingly modeled off a real life prototype. Each train is classified as either a freight, express, or mixed engine. Express is mainly used for fast passenger trains that need less adhesion to the rails while the freight engines have less speed but more traction, allowing them to pull heavier freight cars over mountain passes. A mixed engine is just as it says, a do-anything engine that won’t do anything particularly well. The right trains appear to be in the right categories as they would in real life. Now let me put on my nerd glasses and say that since the game is mainly focused on the years between 1830 and 1930, you end up with a lot of similar looking engines (many 4-4-0 “American”, 2-6-0 “Mogul” and 4-6-0 “Ten Wheeler” types), which is accurate for the time period but you end up not having many options for diesel or electric trains, since they were not wide spread until the 1930s or 1940s. The way you end up getting new engines is, instead of them just becoming available once you reach a certain year, you have a research tree similar to the Civilization games that allows you to unlock engines and other upgrades as you progress. This means you can have in theory some things like a streamlined diesel train helping to build on the transcontinental railroad if you play the research tree right.

Now the beating heart of any Tycoon game like this is the economy. Railway Empire’s formula should be familiar to anyone who has played Railroad or Transport Tycoon before. There are cities you connect and each city has an industry you need to transport goods to and from. Along with that, there are passengers and mail that need to be transported between cities. As you provide more goods and passenger service to the city, the bigger the city gets and the more demand increases. These things happen whether you build a railroad there or not, but much more slowly, as they are being brought in by cart, in theory.

Railway Empire on Switch

A lot of this plays out on each individual city screen. A chart tells you what goods are in demand and which are not. It’s difficult to read, since it uses icons that aren’t necessarily easy to understand for each column. The icons aren’t intuitive, though thankfully since this game has been out since 2018, I could look up my questions online, but it’s still confusing based on the in-game information.

Now, many goods are not made in cities but in farms and mines out in the countryside. Many of these goods will eventually wander their way to cities that need them but it is much faster to transport them via railway, so you may end up with many small trains going to the same city, thus choking up your rail lines. To avoid this, you can build warehouses along your routes that can store goods coming in from local industries. Then a single condensed train with many different goods can go into your cities. This is a feature I love and once I figured it out, I’ve been integrating them into all my railways.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Railway Empire, as can be told by my shoulders being sore from being hunched over my Switch while my wife watched the 10th hour of Millionaire Matchmaker. This definitely scratched an itch for me and will be my go to Railroad Tycoon-ish game from now on. I love that it is now on the Switch since I can now bring it on long flights. I would 100% recommend this to all trains fans and anyone who likes this breed of intense economic sim. A few hiccups minorly hinder it at times, but once you learn your way around the tracks, Railway Empire is a very sound game.


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TalkBack / Re: IMPRESSIONS: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
« on: June 03, 2009, 12:53:53 AM »
we are stuck with yellow and blue toads... can we call the blue one toadigi? (yeah i know, I'm hilarious)

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TalkBack / Re: New Zelda in the Works With More Mature Link
« on: June 03, 2009, 12:32:31 AM »
I'm still hoping for more realistic sword fights with wii motion plus, they could make zelda magnificent if that works well

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TalkBack / Re: More Information on The Beatles: Rock Band Revealed
« on: June 02, 2009, 09:36:11 PM »
NM, looked it up, bundle comes with the bass, mic and drums....so excited...

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TalkBack / Re: More Information on The Beatles: Rock Band Revealed
« on: June 02, 2009, 08:27:36 PM »
I have been holding out on rock band for a while, mainly because of the price, but this I believe will push me over the edge and make me fork over the 200 bucks for it. Any details if the controllers will come in a bundle like the previous games?

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We should just organize people to buy it, just to prove there is a hardcore market on the wii  :P

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TalkBack / Re: REVIEWS: Maboshi's Arcade
« on: January 09, 2009, 01:17:33 AM »
this game is incredibly and addicting, I'm pretty sure i curse more at this game than any other...

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Don't worry, you not the only one who liked FF:CC, mind you, I had my little brother, and a friend that lived up stairs and we all ended up playing it. It was awesome when you all got together to play. But back onto this game...

I loved it, and am still loving it.

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