You can also start a scenario and then pass it along to another player online in Relay mode. Then there is the career mode that has missions you must complete, and a more relaxed sandbox mode that has all of the missions from career mode. You can choose free roam, which allows you to just run the train without worrying about stopping anywhere. The game includes three basic ways to play. Instructions are given via written text instead of over the radio, and even when you are given a checkout run your copilot says everything via written word. There is no music at all, and no spoken dialogue either. When you move to the rear of the train all you get is the sound effect with no atmosphere. Clickity clack down the track with a ping here or a buzzer there, all with the noise of the engine behind you. The noises the trains make are all modeled faithfully but anything else is just sort of there. The audio is also on the underwhelming side. That’s not to say the game can’t look good, it often manages to still make you reach for the screen shot button, but there are absolutely rough edges here. It does the job, telling you when you’ve entered a station or a section of track that passes through a town, but that’s about it. What they’ve done is modeled the trains quite well and then given you some backgrounds that are a little bit primitive. I doubt the developers were aiming for photo realism and they have not achieved it. The in-game graphics are…well, they’re past their prime to put it mildly. Yes, gravity, what a concept, I know, but when you think about what these guys are doing for a living it’s remarkable more tragedies don’t occur. Cresting a hill you’ve been climbing for a half an hour at full throttle and then easing off the throttle completely as you head down the slope still gaining speed is a bit of a rush. Of the three I enjoyed the American route the most because of the challenges involved in getting your cargo up the mountain and then back down. The American train is a cargo hauler that shows you what its like to have a train with miles of cargo behind you. The English train, for example, is a passenger train that has to stop and pick up passengers, while the German train is a bullet train that does the same thing at higher speeds. Each one offers the player a different view of what its like to run a train. The main game comes with three train routes, one in England, one in Germany and one in the United States. Thankfully there is a pause option, or I’d be telling you to hit the bathroom before starting a run. There is no time acceleration button, and most if not all of the trips take upwards of an hour or more. There is a handy control panel that exists in all trains that will get you going in no time at all, but you can turn that feature off and be forced to use the fully modeled in cockpit controls if you so desire. TS13 is admittedly much easier to get into. The ones that required you to read a flight manual before figuring out how to start the engine. Train Simulator 2013 is in the class of other simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator and its ilk. To be clear, I’m not shocked about it being required in real life, just in a video game. So imagine my surprise when I discovered the game has no auto pilot beyond cruise control, and that without constant attention your train can suffer a tragic failure, as the people of Spain and Quebec sadly found out not too long ago. I figured the game would have an auto pilot somewhere that would handle all of the stops and such. I’ll admit that the real reason I got the game was to have a nifty screen saver. Holy cow, have you seen what model trains are selling for these days? Or you could take the route I went, and purchase a PC simulator. So it was either a model railroad, which frankly was just too big of a hassle with all of the room it would occupy, not to mention the cost. But owning your own train? That’s something reserved for billionaires with nothing to do with their money. And they are big powerful machines that make lots of noise.
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