Railway Empire Review

Railway Empire is a new railroad tycoon game, in the spirit of the old railroad tycoon by Sid Meier. Made by Gaming Minds, in Germany. I have put in quite a few hours in this game, because I streamed it the past few weeks on twitch. So if you check the videos on my channel, you can see (almost) the entire campaign.

The game is quite enjoyable, the graphics, especially the locomotives, are nice, and the presentation is polished. The track editing itself is pretty good, one of the best I have seen in a train game to be honest. One thing though, you can’t cross tracks ! Which is very frustrating, especially at the start. Somewhere along the line you get used to it, and build around it (or above as the case may be), but it’s still very annoying.

character selection screen
Character selection screen before starting a scenario

There are four play modes, you should probably start off with the campaign, then there are a bunch of scenarios, that are quite like the campaign chapters, but they’re standalone and don’t have any cut scenes.  Then there’s freemode, which leaves you with the most flexibility as you can pick the era to play in and one of the five maps, that you get to know in the campaign. Last (and least ;)) there is a sandbox mode without money and competition. Might be interesting to test something out, but it doesn’t sound very challenging to me.

The campaign is nice with a story to it, basically how the first Transcontinental Railroad was build. Some funny moments are to be had, with the competition being cartoon like characters that talk banter every now and then. The objectives in the campaign aren’t always easy. I had to restart a few a few times to get a good understanding what needed to be done to complete a chapter. All in all the campaign is fun, but rather limited. Only 5 chapters in the US (5 maps in all that return in the other game modes) in the timespan of 1940 – 1910. No europe, asia and or japan or whatever. I assume some DLC or expansion packs will remedy this, but for a $50,- it’s a little limited to say the least.

Four track station in Indianapolis

Another annoying aspect is that the AI cheats. It’s literally on EASY mode. You can use this mode yourself as well, though I don’t know why anyone would as it takes all the fun out of a train game imho. This means that it only needs one track and the trains never collide, they just run straight through each other. So no need to track changes, double tracks, signals, multi track stations. It’s quite immersion breaking as well to look at. So you better don’t ;).

All in all I have been having a good time with the game, and spend quite a few hours in it, and I’ll definately will play it some more. I’ll probably also would buy some more campaign like content, if it’s somewhat reasonably priced. As of now it lacks content and a somewhat more sophisticated AI to warrent it’s big $50,- price tag. Put it on your wishlist and buy it when it’s on sale, that would be my recommendation.

Pacific 4-6-2
The trains are pretty :).

The game is available on both GOG and steam. GOG is DRM free and comes with a kickback of almost 8 Euro in Europe, depending on your location. You can of course also buy a steam key at Greenman Gaming ;).

2017 In Gaming – PC Gaming

Here we go, the final article about 2017, after this I’ll be looking forward into the bright future :). Let’s kick off by a list of games I actually played the most last year.

  • Factorio 0.15
  • Rimworld
  • Hitman
  • Wow – LEGION

Maybe you can spot a trend here, these are all older games that have received updates or content last year.

Spaghetti Base in Factorio
Spaghetti Base in Factorio

Factorio is now one my most played games (after wow). It was excellent before 0.15, but the end game changed so much with the 0.15 update. You no longer need alien science any more, that was dropped by the alien creature in the game, but was replaced by something you could make yourself. The game overall just got a lot better and better longevity with updates 0.15 and 0.16 (on going now, I assume we’ll see a release this year).

Rimworld is just about the same story, it had two updates last year (A17 and B18, though A16 was released just before the start of 2017) and improved quite a bit. Also mods and addons can make it even better, countless hours of fun, mayhem and frustration to be had here ;). It will probably see a release this year.

Rimworld
Mayhem in Rimworld

I kind of missed Hitman release in 2016, and got it on a special deal in 2017 and wow, especially the first few scenarios are so good. I got immersed in it around april and may and played so much. Then it started to fade a little. The new episodes arent as good as the first few ones. Hitman is now independent of Square Enix and new content might appear this year.

World of Warcraft – Legion. Even after 13 years WoW is still going strong. Somehow Blizzard got it right with this expansion, I kept playing throughout without getting bored of the repetitive world quests, and of course raising alts. This year we’ll get a new expansion, very much looking forward to that.

Continue reading 2017 In Gaming – PC Gaming

2017 In Gaming Xbox One

Gaming in 2017 – XBOX ONE

To be honest I don’t buy a whole lot of Xbox One titles, but there were a few this past year.

Here is the list :

  • Halo Wars 2
  • Fifa 18
  • Forza 7
  • Assassin’ Creed

The main reason I boot up the Xbone One is to play a few rounds of Fifa 18 FUT. I play if on a somewhat low level but for some reason it’s great fun to play a few games a few times a week and get the weekly reward, a few gold packs and a stack of coins. I think I only spent real money at the start, and bought some packs to get started. I made a premier league based team and a spanish one. It’s quite fun to see it improve over time.

Halo Wars 2 was released earlier in the year, now almost a year ago already. Haven’t seen it mentioned much, and it wasn’t played much on Twitch either. It’s a very decent strategy title though, great controls for the controller as well. The story is enjoyable as well, and it’s gotten some DLC over the course of the year. You can also play it on Windows 10, but I found it more convenient to play it on the XBOX.

I didn’t really plan to get Forza 7, but it was pretty cheap around Xmas I think, so I picked it up then. It’s got a lot of tracks and different types of contests, but it feels a bit too arcady. Maybe I should play around with the settings a bit, and make it slightly more realistic.

Asassin’s Creed Origins was the last purchase of the year, already reduced in price for 39,99. The game looks wonderful, has plenty to do and a decent story. If you’re looking for a vast, somewhat open world game, this one is pretty good.

That’s it for the Xbox for 2017, it’s a nice console, but I have to say that overall PS4 has more and better exclusives. Most of the Xbox One titles you can also get for PC, where they play usually better. The Xbox is in an odd spot in that regard. For convenience some titles are easier to play on the xbox. Just pop in the disc and off you go ;).