Locomotion, Chris Sawyer's

Adding some nuances to the overall "better play OTTD" sentiment: CS' Locomotion suffers heavily from the Rollercoaster Tycoon Engine. The building system is reused 1:1 and was never intendet to be comfortable for more than a rollercoaster. Building complex networks is clumsy and the added possibilitie of 3D structures does not compensate for this. Quite the contrary, I found the complex puzzle of routing tracks in a increasingly covered TTD world (and even more in TT with limited signaling, routefinding and therefore dedicated tracks for each connection) to be highly entertaining. In Locomtion it all boils down to having the money and enough patience with the GUI. But there is an even bigger RCT caveeat: The enginge cannot handle large areas. While it has been beefed up a bit for Locomotion, the largest mapsize is still small compared to TTs tiniest - and who did ever play these? Add in the option to build giant stations and ultra long multi engine trains (just as in OTTD) and you end up with trains arriving at their desitionation before there have left their station of origin. Additionally, Locomotion tries to squeeze in as much terrain as possible in the limited area, ridiculing it to nothing more than a trainset simulator. And who needs a trainset simulator with the graphic quality of a transportation sim? While I personally think it looking much better than OTTD editions of its era, Locomotion is not nice enough to just sit back an watch.

Great fan of Chris Sawyer and TT but this was just a letdown when I first played it several years ago. I found out that it existed and rushed to find a copy and it was really quite poor, nowhere near the standards of TT - if you can't replicate the quality of a game a decade after your hit with a very, very similar type of game, then you will struggle to get it noticed and sold - which is what happened with Locomotion. Buy it if you want "the complete set" but don't expect to be playing it very much at all.

I loved the successor Transport Tycoon. The graphics were nice at that time. Even today it shows nicely crafted landscapes with few pixels. The learning curve was low and playing your own scenarios was very motivating because you always had something to do: tweak that connection, add a new line here, fix some traffic james there. For people who like simulations and models trains the perfect match. The updated graphics using the outdated Rollercoaster Tycoon engine are very low detailed. It looks a little more realistic because of larger wagons and rounder curves. Building your tracks works okay for roads or rollercoasters, but it is quite painful for the important railways compared to the successor. You always and up with endless stone bridge constructions which look very awful. The idea of creating cheap tracks that fit into the landscape is completely gone. The AI is terrible and still cheats a lot when doing the expensive terain modifications at much too high frequency. As most people here I recommend the Open Source reimplation http://www.openttd.org/ It has many usability improvements. Nice retro graphics, full internet support and a very active modding community.

A spiritual successor to the great Transport Tycoon. Unfortunately not as great as that one. It's a transport strategy/business simulator type of game. You have a company and you can build rail tracks, train depots, bus stations, airfields, ports, and their respective vehicles. With them you need to set routes to trade between the farms, industries, cities and villages of the map. The game has improvements, but it lacks some of the charm of its predecessor and that is not just wishful thinking. At times Locomotion feels like an extensive mod for Roller coaster Tycoon. I would say the game has gone 2 steps forward, 1 step back and 1 step to the side. It's good, just not as good as Transport Tycoon. If you haven't played that game and you can't find it or make it work, definitely check Locomotion. I still have it installed too.

I actually love locomotion, despite playing it's predecessors Transport Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Deluxe since their release. Locomotion was a breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't have the replayability or ease of use that TT(D) has, but in it's own right it's a fantastic game. Treat Locomotion (Lomo) as an interactive trainset, not a Transport Game and you will love it. Try to approach it as a "new" Transport Tycoon, and expect to hate it. I give Locomotion 5 stars for it's game-play and effort when discounting my thoughts on TT