This gets lots of things so right but there's too many problems letting it down. In short, this is very much a train simulator rather than a railway simulator. Let me explain.
Plonk yourself into London at 8:30am and where is the rush hour traffic? There's maybe 1 train every 15mins let alone the lack of passengers. There should be constant movement, but its just dead! The general lackThis gets lots of things so right but there's too many problems letting it down. In short, this is very much a train simulator rather than a railway simulator. Let me explain.
Plonk yourself into London at 8:30am and where is the rush hour traffic? There's maybe 1 train every 15mins let alone the lack of passengers. There should be constant movement, but its just dead! The general lack of traffic on the line while playing through scenarios really does remove some of the immersion. The lack of accurate traffic is also frustrating with the great Western railway route only featuring 3 trains. Where are the electrics? Of course you can't include everything that would come down the line but driving down the route with nothing using the nicely modelled overhead wiring is a bit off.
Being a train nerd I didn't need to use the tutorials to get going. However they are obviously lacking. We need signalling tutorials for the different routes for beginners. Lots of scenarios require you to obey and chase yellows and begginerswould have no clue! I don't know how a beginner would know to use the "contact signalman" function either which is required on many scenarios. And the game made me repeat the same compulsory tutorial for each new route. 1. Get in train, 2. Play with cameras. I shouldn't have to do this 5 times over for each new route.
Then we get into the performance issues. So the draw distance is pretty bad on ps4. Anything further than 10 meters or so away looks pretty terrible and the framerate walking around busy stations is unplayable at times. Also noticed loads of visual "fuzzy" glitches, especially the train wheels. Big fuzz balls. But I do appreciate that optimisation isn't easy. There seems to be a really extreme surround sound effect which is really off-putting at times. Panning around the cab moves the sounds so drastically from one ear to another that it makes you feel deaf in one ear. It's just too much in my opinion. Frustrating as the sounds otherwise are great. Wish there was an option for a more stereo experience.
Certain shortcuts really need to be implemented for the ps4. You cannot drive the BR DMU outside of the cab as their is no controller shortcut for the gear selector. Pretty frustrating when everything else has a shortcut bound to it.
Some good points though. The trains do look amazing and the weathering is superb. The sounds are great despite the surround sound effect. The track detail is really nice. The trains feel big and heavy. They rock about as they should - Dovetail have made some great advances with the physics.
We need a multilayer!
In conclusion this game is great if you are more of a train enthusiast rather than a railway enthusiast. No matter how good the locomotives are modelled, if the surrounding traffic on the line just isn't realistic, my immersion is ruined. We need real rush hour traffic, both with the volume of trains and the people!… Expand
Train Sim World 2020Your Score0 out of 10User Score
