Railroad Tycoon 3 (Mac) Reviews

5 Comments to “Railroad Tycoon 3 (Mac) Reviews”

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1. Matt Conrad
   November 7, 2010 - 1:47 am | Permalink

   Review by Matt Conrad
   Rating:
   After anxiously waiting for a Mac release of Railroad Tycoon 3, I find that it’s a much-needed upgrade of Railroad Tycoon 2. However, that’s really all it is — I’d be tempted to call it Railroad Tycoon 2.5 rather than 3. There are probably enough changes to track building and industries to warrant a new version number, but other than that and a few interface changes, RT3 is essentially the same game as RT2.

   The most obvious difference is in the graphics. The new 3-D engine is fantastic. You can actually watch the side rods of most of the steam engines go round and round. Tracks are a bit high off the ground, which is a little distracting at first, but overall the graphics are a huge improvement.

   Track laying is substantially improved from the previous version of the game, as well. Most significant is the return of tunnels, one of the most maligned omissions in RT2. You can also build a bridge over another railroad or duck under an existing bridge, a feature fans of this game series have long wished for.

   Gone is the grid with its limitations of tracks at only eight angles. You can now create smooth, sweeping curves at any angle you please. That said, the gradients could use some tweaking. Particularly annoying are the ramps leading to bridges. It’s silly to have a 3% grade just because you’re crossing a river. Likewise, I found it very difficult to create a railroad in even slightly hilly terrain that didn’t resemble a roller coaster. And don’t think this is a model layout design aid, either. It’s impossible to force tracks to go where you want them.

   Maintenance shops and service towers are now separate elements. You can’t place a service tower at a depot and have a locomotive serviced while it’s making its station stop. This hurts the game’s realism a bit and can be annoying if, like me, you’re used to the old style station expansions. The good news is that such facilities can be placed anywhere, even where there’s no station, and you can demolish them to save money when they are no longer useful.

   The construction and demolition tools aren’t all that intuitive. To bulldoze a building, for example, you have to enter the track building interface and select the bulldozer. And industry construction is done from the station building interface. No doubt this was done to minimize the number of tool buttons in the main interface, but it feels klunky — especially if you’re used to the old RT2 interface.

   While access to the controls has changed somewhat, most of the core game controls will look extremely familiar to anyone who’s played RT2. Building and changing train consists works essentially the same way as in RT2, with a few excellent additions. One major change is the “auto manage” option which autmatically sets the train’s consist depending on what loads are available at the station. You can select the minimum and maximum number of cars on each train, and select whether the train will carry any kind of car, just freight cargoes, or just express cargoes. You can also manually control the trains’ consists. For more realism it would be nice if passenger cars were always placed together in the consist, but I’ll admit that’s picking a very small nit.

   A couple of very handy shortcuts have also been added to train building, including the ability to copy trains. Mac users will find this process rather klunky and very un-Mac-like, but at least it’s there and works. One new feature I really like is the ability to replace locomotives based on their class or age. This comes in very handy for keeping your locomotive fleet current. There’s also a checkbox which will make the consist the same at all stations in the train’s route. Beware, though — the change happens as soon as you check the box and isn’t undoable by unchecking the box!

   The economy and stock market works essentially the same as it did in RT2. You can buy and sell shares of your railroad or your competitors, set your company’s dividend, sell bonds, and sell stock. Selling stock is just as useless for raising money as it was in the previous version, even though you’re now allowed two sales of stock per year instead of just one. You also still have to have a good credit rating to sell a bond.

   I haven’t gotten into the map editor yet, but from reading the manual, RT3 seems to have the one limitation I was afraid it would have — you can’t use maps from RT2. With the huge number of user-built maps from RT2, this is probably the biggest disappointment in the entire game. It’s understandable, however, given the number of changes made to the industries and track building. Still, some sort of conversion utility would be nice for map developers so we don’t have to start from scratch.

   All in all, this is a fair upgrade over the previous version of the game. I’m not all that sure that this version was worth either the wait for the Mac port or the $45 price tag, but now that I have it I certainly won’t be getting rid of it!

2. P. M. Adams
   November 7, 2010 - 2:19 am | Permalink

   Review by P. M. Adams
   Rating:
   I give this title three stars because I’m talking about the MacSoft version of it; the game as it was originally written for Windows deserves a better rating than that. This game has more reasons for a patch to be released than any other I’ve seen but MacSoft won’t issue one. I’ve been on the phone with them and as near as I can tell, they don’t see any problem with the program. That said, everyone I’ve talked to has experienced the same problems as I.

   For instance, you’re playing along on a good sized map and you’ve been electrifying your tracks as you build them. You take over a company and go and electrify those tracks. Now you look down through your train roster and notice several trains with the “no electricity” icon next to them. How did this happen? All my tracks are electrified from sea-to-shining-sea, so why does the program lose this information? You don’t even need to merge with another company for this to happen. While this may not seem like a big deal, when you’ve got a roster of 100 – 150 triains and a full third of them have to be replaced with diesels because the program “forgets”, it costs a boatload of money.

   Another issue is that the electrical tracks refuse to run through long tunnels or over longer suspension spans. I’ve also had stations simply disappear, although not very frequently. The electric track issues are an “every-game” occurence. Why won’t MacSoft issue any patches? AOE 2 has a satchel of problems too that the “patch” didn’t even address.

   My thinking is that if you want to play games go out and get yourself a fast Windows machine to do it on; there’s more variety, better performance and better support. I’m not knocking Macs; I own three G5′s and use them daily…just not for games. There’s no reason a game wouldn’t perform well on OS X but I don’t see anybody writing for it, while miserable excuses for porting other games to it seems to be the “standard”.

3. Harry Erwin
   November 7, 2010 - 2:23 am | Permalink

   Review by Harry Erwin
   Rating:
   Be aware that RT 3 _requires_ 32 MB of graphic memory. You can’t run it on early PowerBooks for example. It also strongly prefers a 2- or 3-button mouse.

4. bob
   November 7, 2010 - 2:50 am | Permalink

   Review by bob
   Rating:
   After anxiously waiting for a Mac release of Railroad Tycoon 3, I find that it’s a much-needed upgrade of Railroad Tycoon 2. However, that’s really all it is — I’d be tempted to call it Railroad Tycoon 2.5 rather than 3. There are probably enough changes to track building and industries to warrant a new version number, but other than that and a few interface changes, RT3 is essentially the same game as RT2. The most obvious difference is in the graphics. The new 3-D engine is fantastic. You can actually watch the side rods of most of the steam engines go round and round. Tracks are a bit high off the ground, which is a little distracting at first, but overall the graphics are a huge improvement. Track laying is substantially improved from the previous version of the game, as well. Most significant is the return of tunnels, one of the most maligned omissions in RT2. You can also build a bridge over another railroad or duck under an existing bridge, a feature fans of this game series have long wished for. Gone is the grid with its limitations of tracks at only eight angles. You can now create smooth, sweeping curves at any angle you please. That said, the gradients could use some tweaking. Particularly annoying are the ramps leading to bridges. It’s silly to have a 3% grade just because you’re crossing a river. Likewise, I found it very difficult to create a railroad in even slightly hilly terrain that didn’t resemble a roller coaster. And don’t think this is a model layout design aid, either. It’s impossible to force tracks to go where you want them. Maintenance shops and service towers are now separate elements. You can’t place a service tower at a depot and have a locomotive serviced while it’s making its station stop. This hurts the game’s realism a bit and can be annoying if, like me, you’re used to the old style station expansions. The good news is that such facilities can be placed anywhere, even where there’s no station, and you can demolish them to save money when they are no longer useful. The construction and demolition tools aren’t all that intuitive. To bulldoze a building, for example, you have to enter the track building interface and select the bulldozer. And industry construction is done from the station building interface. No doubt this was done to minimize the number of tool buttons in the main interface, but it feels klunky — especially if you’re used to the old RT2 interface. While access to the controls has changed somewhat, most of the core game controls will look extremely familiar to anyone who’s played RT2. Building and changing train consists works essentially the same way as in RT2, with a few excellent additions. One major change is the “auto manage” option which autmatically sets the train’s consist depending on what loads are available at the station. You can select the minimum and maximum number of cars on each train, and select whether the train will carry any kind of car, just freight cargoes, or just express cargoes. You can also manually control the trains’ consists. For more realism it would be nice if passenger cars were always placed together in the consist, but I’ll admit that’s picking a very small nit. A couple of very handy shortcuts have also been added to train building, including the ability to copy trains. Mac users will find this process rather klunky and very un-Mac-like, but at least it’s there and works. One new feature I really like is the ability to replace locomotives based on their class or age. This comes in very handy for keeping your locomotive fleet current. There’s also a checkbox which will make the consist the same at all stations in the train’s route. Beware, though — the change happens as soon as you check the box and isn’t undoable by unchecking the box! The economy and stock market works essentially the same as it did in RT2. You can buy and sell shares of your railroad or your competitors, set your company’s dividend, sell bonds, and sell stock. Selling stock is just as useless for raising money as it was in the previous version, even though you’re now allowed two sales of stock per year instead of just one. You also still have to have a good credit rating to sell a bond. I haven’t gotten into the map editor yet, but from reading the manual, RT3 seems to have the one limitation I was afraid it would have — you can’t use maps from RT2. With the huge number of user-built maps from RT2, this is probably the biggest disappointment in the entire game. It’s understandable, however, given the number of changes made to the industries and track building. Still, some sort of conversion utility would be nice for map developers so we don’t have to start from scratch. All in all, this is a fair upgrade over the previous version of the game. I’m not all that sure that this version was worth either the wait for the Mac port or the $45 price tag, but now that I have it I certainly won’t be getting rid of it!

5. Mad Tech
   November 7, 2010 - 3:29 am | Permalink

   Review by Mad Tech
   Rating:
   The game’s graphics and playability is great. No problems installing the game and the learning curve was very mininal even with the finacial portion. Great game for the price.

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