Author Topic: Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review  (Read 1836 times)

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Offline Daan

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Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review
« on: March 30, 2015, 12:08:10 PM »

So... these are like cable cars, correct?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/39951/suspension-railroad-simulator-wii-u-review

Until this game, I didn't know much about the existence of suspension railroads. This form of monorail is quite uncommon in the grand scheme of things, but does all sorts of interesting things. While you float above street level, you will have a fantastic view of the city beneath you. I surely hope to experience the majesty of it all some day. What I don't want to experience one minute longer is Suspension Railroad Simulator, which released recently for the Wii U eShop in Europe.

You take on the role of the railroad driver and do the things that are associated with the job. I had to start up the engine, speed up, slow down, put it in reverse, open and close the doors. There are some other things you can do in the cockpit, but they hold zero relevance and the likelihood of using these features is slim. I hardly ever got the chance to walk through the train and fix stuck doors, for instance. You can look around the train, but that is only needed to see if the passangers are all on board. Your goal is to get passengers from point A to B and that is pretty much the entire experience.

For some, that might sound totally adequate. The fact is that Suspension Railroad Simulator doesn't do much to engage the player. There is an event mode that you can toggle, but outside the moments I had to fix doors, nothing really occured during my playthrough. I didn't even get punished by the game and it told me to be aware of certain things. After a good hour, I got bored out of my skull. I tried it with the events turned off, but the experience didn't improve really. I could speed over the tracks, but even that lost its appeal after a while. I just felt that there wasn't much to this game and stopped playing altogether.

All the switches and options are mapped to the buttons on the Wii U GamePad and this is super unwieldy at first. This is mostly because Suspension Railroad Simulator doesn't tell you a single thing in-game. The sheet that is supposed to explain things glitched out and you will have to find your way to the manual to learn what every button on your controller does. Even at that, I only learned to handle the most basic actions and left the rest for what they were. There was an option to play it with the touchscreen controls of the Wii U GamePad, but the results were horrific. It felt extremely imprecise and I laughed it off after a bit.

Suspension Railroad Simulator doesn't look great. In fact, I would call it truly terrifying. The environments look quite awful and just sort of pop in and out. The character models look even worse and most of them don't have proper eyes. What makes it more insane is that the characters float over the floor from time to time and they can make their arms go through the train. The whole game just blends together to the terrible mess it is and even comes complete with framerate issues. There is nothing charming about the long loading times either, which occur when you are trying to get to the meat of this adventure. There are a few extremely annoying sound effects as well.

Is there a reason that Suspension Railroad Simulator came to the Wii U? I am not sure myself, but they did do a terrible job with the game. The gameplay becomes boring extremely quickly and the title is just an overall mess. Beyond those initial laughs, there is no real reason to buy this game in the first place. It is interesting to see something different on the system, but you know, not like this.


Offline Crimm

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Re: Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2015, 09:15:22 PM »
You know, I make so many jokes about the GmbHs dumping their dubious wares on the eShop that I fret people will think I'm anti-German. But God, I mean has anyone in Germany ever seen a good video game? The only excuse I can muster is they just don't have a yardstick to judge their Bucket Truck Simulator against.
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Offline JasonMaivia

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Re: Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2015, 10:37:19 PM »
Just once, I'd like to see SquareEnix release a good Densha de Go game here.  I don't care if they decide to port one of the old PS2 games,  because many of those games were done right.

Offline KDR_11k

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Re: Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2015, 01:21:40 AM »
But we can judge budget truck simulators against Eurotruck Simulator. Or hell, even Farming Simulator is better than this.


These are mostly cash grabs based on the success of MS FlightSim and TrainSim (which each command a whole shelf of add-ons in retail stores!) and later the Farming Simulator games (which tend to have no add-ons on shelves but instead occupy a top 10 spot). I do wonder how many people are foolish enough to buy a second shovelware simulator though, they seem to be a case of simply flinging **** at a wall with a gatling gun. So many crappy simulators pop up and disappear again without anybody but the garbage bin of the retailers realizing it. I guess the only reason they keep making these is because they're dirt cheap to make.

Offline Soren

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Re: Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2015, 01:29:51 AM »
I'll wait for the GOTY version.
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Offline Wah

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Re: Suspension Railroad Simulator (Wii U) Review
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2015, 08:23:22 PM »
We Australians get the European version's of things, wouldn't it make sense to get American things because where're closer to America.

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