Transport Tycoon
Transport Tycoon was one of my favorite games of all time. I had all but given up hope that its creator, Chris Sawyer would ever come up with a Transport Tycoon II.
But it seems, according to this interview, that he has. Saywer is also the creator of the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. I think this series was terrible, mostly because of the child-like graphics.
Unfortunately, Transport Tycoon 2, known now as "Locomotion" (Worst title ever?) has similarly garish graphics.
Comparatively, the somewhat limited Railroad Tycoon III has some amazing visuals. The two unfortunate points with this are that (a) you only run trains and (b) the interface is fairly poorly written. Moving around the the RRT3 world is nearly impossible. Though I am pleasantly surprised how fast the game with such impressive graphics plays, and how smoothe it is.
In either case, the real successor to Transport Tycoon might actually be Transport Giant. Not only does the game look to have some decent graphics, the times span of the game includes horse wagons and clipper ships all the way to modern monorails. This is the same maker of Traffic Giant and Industry Giant.
Industry Giant seemed, at least to me, to focus too much on industry, and Traffic Giant focused only passenger transport. But to really be an excellent game, Transport Giant will have to be mroe than a mere amalgamation of the Industry and Traffic Giant franchises. What made the original Transport Tycoon amazing was the very naturalistic handling of transporting goods and services (at least back in 1994 it was fairly naturalistic).
There was something not quite right with Industry Giant. Besides somewhat cartoonish graphics, the transport vehicles moved in ways that seemed characteristically digital and fake, rather than in ways that real ships cars and planes would travel. I fear that Transport Giant may not over come this issue.
All of these transport incarnations really seem to miss the real point. Its not just fun to build a giant transport empire, its fun to also watch. The only software publisher to really get this part right is Maxis, the great founder of the genre when they came out with SimCity almost two decades ago (ok, not quite, but a really long time ago). The newest incarnation, SimCity 4 achieves everything one could want on a graphical level. It is the absolute model for graphics in the genre.
Yet Simcity is a city building simulation, not a transport simulation. While you can build roads and rail lines and harbors, you dont actually direct or control any of the transportation. There are no extensive selections of locomotives or different kinds of buses; only generic bus stations that produce automatically a standard city bus.
When SimCity Rush Hour, the expansion pack for SC4 came out, there was hope and speculation that perhaps this might be the add on to simcity that would make it the ultimate simulation game. Instead, Rush Hour updated SC4 with some gameplay corrections, and added back to SC4 some of the features stripped out of the game during the testing phase (early screen shots of the game depict many of the features in Rush Hour that the original SC4 release were missing. Hardcore fans who bought SC4 in the first months after its release were than milked for another 30 bucks for features promised in the original game. its good to be a software programmer).
In either case, I'm still waiting for my ultimate game. Some day, maybe, it will come.
But it seems, according to this interview, that he has. Saywer is also the creator of the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. I think this series was terrible, mostly because of the child-like graphics.
Unfortunately, Transport Tycoon 2, known now as "Locomotion" (Worst title ever?) has similarly garish graphics.
Comparatively, the somewhat limited Railroad Tycoon III has some amazing visuals. The two unfortunate points with this are that (a) you only run trains and (b) the interface is fairly poorly written. Moving around the the RRT3 world is nearly impossible. Though I am pleasantly surprised how fast the game with such impressive graphics plays, and how smoothe it is.
In either case, the real successor to Transport Tycoon might actually be Transport Giant. Not only does the game look to have some decent graphics, the times span of the game includes horse wagons and clipper ships all the way to modern monorails. This is the same maker of Traffic Giant and Industry Giant.
Industry Giant seemed, at least to me, to focus too much on industry, and Traffic Giant focused only passenger transport. But to really be an excellent game, Transport Giant will have to be mroe than a mere amalgamation of the Industry and Traffic Giant franchises. What made the original Transport Tycoon amazing was the very naturalistic handling of transporting goods and services (at least back in 1994 it was fairly naturalistic).
There was something not quite right with Industry Giant. Besides somewhat cartoonish graphics, the transport vehicles moved in ways that seemed characteristically digital and fake, rather than in ways that real ships cars and planes would travel. I fear that Transport Giant may not over come this issue.
All of these transport incarnations really seem to miss the real point. Its not just fun to build a giant transport empire, its fun to also watch. The only software publisher to really get this part right is Maxis, the great founder of the genre when they came out with SimCity almost two decades ago (ok, not quite, but a really long time ago). The newest incarnation, SimCity 4 achieves everything one could want on a graphical level. It is the absolute model for graphics in the genre.
Yet Simcity is a city building simulation, not a transport simulation. While you can build roads and rail lines and harbors, you dont actually direct or control any of the transportation. There are no extensive selections of locomotives or different kinds of buses; only generic bus stations that produce automatically a standard city bus.
When SimCity Rush Hour, the expansion pack for SC4 came out, there was hope and speculation that perhaps this might be the add on to simcity that would make it the ultimate simulation game. Instead, Rush Hour updated SC4 with some gameplay corrections, and added back to SC4 some of the features stripped out of the game during the testing phase (early screen shots of the game depict many of the features in Rush Hour that the original SC4 release were missing. Hardcore fans who bought SC4 in the first months after its release were than milked for another 30 bucks for features promised in the original game. its good to be a software programmer).
In either case, I'm still waiting for my ultimate game. Some day, maybe, it will come.
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