Trains In Games

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Train Sim World (PS4/Xbox One/PC, 2018)

It’s weird how much the Train Simulator games have played a part in my life. Railworks 2 got me interested in train games, and its transition over to yearly editions of Train Simulator gave me plenty to cover during my first ever trips to Gamescom - trips which eventually landed me a role as Editor of Pocket Gamer.

It’s been a wild ride these past nine years or so (probably coming up to ten, Jesus Christ), but digital trains are still a love of mine. I simply don’t have the time to write about them anymore, as I’m too busy writing about anything I can get my hands on for sweet, sweet money. And sometimes, that means forgetting to write a blog post for Trains in Games until like, 6 months after the PR guy gave me a code for it. Sorry, Ben (who has now apparently left that job, so... this is all kind of pointless).

Train Sim World, then. A slightly more stripped-back version of the true Train Simulator experience, it’s the first outing of the series on console, but hasn’t taken many concessions to accomodate the move. That’s a good thing - the controls are all intact, and while there’s button combinations on your controller to press, you can just as easily use first-person view to hit everything in the cockpit instead.

But I’m more interested in the “World” part, because now you can get up and physically walk around the environments, both on the train and off the train. Hence why I spent so long messing around in Reading, a station I had become intimately attuned to following a brief time living in Oxford.

Train Sim World’s Reading isn’t like the real Reading. For one, the WHSmiths is gone. And for another, it’s never that quiet in the station. You can walk around digital Reading station and bump into maybe three people. Perhaps it’s because I had the clock set to 10pm, when the only folks around are people making connections to Oxford when trying to get home from London - again, something I knew all too well.

It’s eerily quiet, almost to the point of being beautifully serene. You have this entire blank landscape with absolutely no interaction, just you and the walls and the doors. There’s a haunting kind of beauty to the whole thing, like you’ve just wandered into somewhere long abandoned, a place the locals tell you through hushed tones and terrified eyes that it is definitely haunted. No train times ever show up - trains simply arrive like ghosts through the fog, begging you to get on them and drive them to the next stop. You oblige. It is pleased. You leave, and the train leaves too, no driver on board. But you feel like it knows where it’s going.

I wrote this post a) because I’ve felt guilty about not writing it for months now and b) because I was hoping Ben would hook me up with the Trans-Pennine DLC and I could wax lyrical about the North of England while driving a train about. But he’s gone now, so that’s that plan scuppered. If anyone from Lick PR is reading this, find me on Twitter yeah?

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Secret World: Legends (PC, 2017) [submitted by gsiidr]

Secret World: Legends, in the Kaidan area, has an entire train station, featuring two sets of what I suppose is inspired by the Tokyo Metro 05 Series, and this JR Freight EH200(?)-inspired thing. There’s also an entire container terminal in the nearby harbor.

Thank you for your submission gsiidr!

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Infamous: First Light (2014, PS4)

Maybe this is a cop-out, given that both First Light and Second Son use the same resources, but hear me out: they’re actually very, very different.

OK, so first we can look at the textures. If you jump back to the previous post about Second Son, you’ll see that the actual tram textures don’t feature the graffiti. Strange, really, given that this is a prequel to Second Son. I guess they had a clean-up thing going on in the two years after the events of First Light? Who knows.

Second, remember how the tracks were basically useless in Second Son? Not so much here. Fetch can run through these weird neon cloud things to boost her speed and increase her jump power, and these litter the tracks. I haven’t found a use for these ones just yet, but I imagine they’re best for the weird races you have to do to level up your powers.

The trains themselves still don’t stop to pick up passengers, which is, y’know, inaccurate at best. But hey, I guess that would be kind of pointless given that there’s no passengers waiting for them to stop either.

Just a fun little difference!

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Animal Crossing (2002, GameCube)

Boy, remember pulling into your town on the train at the start of the original Animal Crossing?

There is, frankly, no greater opening sequence in a game than rolling into a town that has been randomly generated for you to live in, jumping off a train, and wandering in. This is where you live now! This is the new world for all your adventures! What will you get up to? Who knows!

OK, so I might be overstating this, but it was pretty majestic. The train in the original game doesn’t really do much else other than bring you into town, either, unless you happened to be travelling to a friend’s town. I think you had to do that on a memory card in slot 2? Christ, remember the days before stable Internet connections on consoles?

It’s a small, unassuming train, but it suits the world nicely. There’s a surprising amount of detail going into it too, given you rarely see the damn thing. I especially like the coal cart. It gives the whole town a nice old-time feel - you know going in that there isn’t going to be cinemas and nightclubs. It’s just quiet country living from here out, friend-o.

Shout out goes to Blanca, who my sister would always draw something inappropriate on if she ever got the chance to do so on my save. You see her on the train from time to time when you come back from somewhere and can draw anything you want on her face. No Internet means no censorship, so it was usually dicks galore. And drawing was hard on a GameCube controller. Back in the day, man. Back. In. The. Day.

Credit where it’s due:

Image 1: http://animalcrossing.wikia.com/wiki/Porter

Image 2: http://justrpg.com/reviews/animal-crossing

Image 3: http://acwikipeaia.wikia.com/wiki/Blanca

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Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (2016, PC/PS4/Xbox One)

“Does a mine cart count as a train?” I hear you ask. But look! It’s not your name on the byline! So shove it.

So this train track in Dear Esther doesn’t go anywhere, obviously. I mean it’s on an island in the Outer Hebrides, where exactly would it go?

There’s a stray minecart here, which implies that at one time it went into a mine, but for what purpose exactly? A cursory glance at the Wikipedia page on the Outer Hebrides doesn’t suggest a particularly strong mining community, but then again that is Wikipedia and I am supposed to be better than that.

The obvious solution is that it Isn’t Really There. In the director’s commentary in the Landmark Edition, lead designer Dan Pinchbeck talks about how he believes Dear Esther is really just a dream, that none of it happens in reality, and that these pieces that are here are someone’s guilt. Maybe the minecart is just here because the protagonist has never visited these islands before, and just assumed there would be a mining community in place.

This would also explain why there’s a sign directing you to Weston-Super-Mare. I don’t know much about geography, but I’m pretty certain that’s nowhere nearby.

Trains as devices in dreams then, I guess?

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Infamous: Second Son (2014, PS4)

Trams! I guess. Still counts as a train.

So I initially looked at this train in Second Son’s version of Seattle and scoffed. One track for an overground transit system? Only two stops? Pull the other one! What a ridiculous, pointless set up that would be, I thought to myself, sitting in lovely Manchester with its extensive tram system.

Turns out, Seattle does have a system like this which runs between the Space Needle and another stop not too far away (as the game depicts). It only has two trams, and only runs between the two stops. Which seems kind of stupid to me, but hey, I’m not a city planner.

Here’s where it differs: the monorail line in real-life Seattle runs in a straight line, while Second Son’s runs in a continuous loop. Not sure why that is, if I’m honest. But there you go.

Another major difference is that virtual Seattle’s monorail system is absolutely useless. It never stops at either station, and just barrels along like its nobody’s business, endlessly, until the end of time. Doesn’t matter though, as there’s no passengers around to ride it, as can be seen in the third photo.

You can jump on and ride it (a la the original Infamous) but there’s no point, since it doesn’t really go anywhere. That and once you unlock Neon powers and infinite sprint you can basically go faster than the train to wherever you’re headed.

The train itself is nice and clean, which is good to see. No graffiti and that. A bit boxy, but monorail trains often are, so it fits in nicely. Shame you can’t see inside, but since it’s essentially just there as set dressing there’s no real need to do much investigation on it.

A shame, really. Riding around on top of trains is usually a lot of fun, but in Second Son it takes far more effort than it’s worth. Believe me.

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Mini Metro Steam Giveaway

Hello!

I have five Steam keys for Mini Metro, the amazing minimalist train game that I played a while back and wrote about, and you could get one!

All you need to do is head to the TrainsInGames Twitter account, give it a quick follow, and retweet the competition tweet to get in on the action!

Competition runs until 7pm GMT on the 2nd of November, so there’s not long!

Good luck!

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Mini Metro (2014 [early access], PC)

This game is adorable!

So the basic premise is kinda similar to Flight Control. You have a bunch of shapes, and you connect them together with your train lines so that passengers can get to their desire destination. You only have a certain number of lines to use, and a certain number of tunnels to connect stations seperated by rivers. You can earn a new line or set of tunnels every in-game week, along with a new locomotive to help ease congestion as the passengers start growing in number. You also have to make sure your lines don't intersect, so if you want to take a line to a station far away, you might need to connect it through a couple of stations, which slows down journey times.

It's really fun and incredibly zen, especially since it's so unfinished that it doesn't have any music as of yet. The silence is kind of weird, but hopefully whatever music does get used is suitably chilled and not at all distracting from the game itself. It needs to retain it's relaxing nature, else it'll lose a lot of what I found massively appealing.

But what is obviously the most interesting aspect (so much so that it was given an honorable mention at the IGF's for it) is the minimalist art style. Trains are represented by rectangles, stations are just different shapes. It relies almost entirely on colour and shapes to push the player along, and it's all the better for it. It's graphics stripped down to their absolute bare minimum, but it moves smoothly and makes perfect sense, meaning that even with the miniscule number of visual prompts provided, you can still enjoy yourself. It's magical. I highly reccommend it.

It's still in Early Access, so I would understand if you, fine reader, had reservations about purchasing it, but if you don't mind taking a risk, give it a whirl. You might well love it.

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Half-Life 2 (2004, Linux/Mac/PC/PS3/Xbox/Xbox 360)

Narrative consistency! You start on a train in the original game and in the sequel! How lovely!

It's a similar set-up to the first game; you're given the freedom to run around, but you can't leave the train. You can go have a chat with the passengers, sort of, which is a lot nicer than simply wandering around an empty carriage as before. But there's still that sense of decay and distress. No one is happy to be there. There's rubbish on the floor. It's all a bit drab. Atmospheric, even. But still roomy! You could probably pack a fair few people on board and have room for all their luggage. So it's not exactly a bad train, even if it is... kind of an evil train?

I like the colour scheme though. Blue and red on top of the silver. It's... a little different, I suppose. Like it's been ripped from somewhere else and just thrown into this world. You'd expect a tyrannical alien overlord to just use tin boxes on wheels or something, but I guess these guys wanted something at least slightly aesthetically pleasing. I like the shape of it too, like it's not just a big long rectangular monstrosity, it sticks out at the front and stuff like that. Trains!

It's not the only train in the game (Valve, it seems, quite like their trains), but as the first one you ride on, it's definitely a very important one.

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Half-Life (1998, Linux/Mac/PC/PS2)

Now who can forget Gordon Freeman's fateful train ride? You fade into the game already on a train, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait out the ride and watch the world go past. And then stop off, turn on cheats, and kill all the scientists with remote bombs. Oh, is there more to the game than that? Whoops.

You're not locked in place on the train, which is nice, but the fact that it's moving constantly to an unknown location is perhaps a little disconcerting. After all, you've got no idea where it's taking you. Could it be leading you to your death? Or is it actually just taking you to work? Where do you work anyway? Little hints come in over the tannoy, and you can piece together the environment by looking out the windows, which is a neat little piece of narrative that has been used plenty of times since. Still, here you can run around a little and jump about and generally just act like a fool in this little moving tin box. It's pleasant.

The train itself has aged badly in the last 17 years, but there's still a lot to like about it. There's a wheelchair spot, which is cool, because you don't really think about secret government reserarch facilities as being particularly inclusive (particularly given most of the characters in the game are just white scientists). It looks like it has some sort of ghastly blue carpet for no real reason. And it has an exit sign! Not enough trains in games with exit signs. It seems kind of dumb to have one really, because I'm sure no one will attempt to leap out of the window, but it's a cute little touch.

Hooray for government transit systems!

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Battlefield 3 (2011, PC/PS3/Xbox 360)

This one was suggested a while back! I'm really great at listening to suggestions, honest!

Battlefield 3 throws you right into the action, and on a train no less. It all kicks off in media res, so you end up playing through this section twice, which is kinda lame given the closed, confined nature of the level. It means you'll play the scene out pretty much the same way each time, but if memory serves it doesn't last very long, so it's no big deal. But starting on a train is interesting. It implies motion, moving forward, and given it's a subway train, the noise of it all combined with the gunshots not having far to travel makes it feel fast-paced and action-y right from the off.

OK I'll level with you, I haven't played this game in years, so I don't remember climbing on top of the train. But hey look, multi-level train gameplay! I seem to recall having to punch someone through a window maybe? Or am I confusing this with something else? I'm really phoning this in right now. I'm super hungry and rushing. I am a bad train journo.

Let's look at the train then real quick. If there's one thing the Frostbite engine does really well it's dramatic lighting, and it's no different here. Everything's lit in a cool white that almost makes things look blue, making the whole thing quite atmospheric, rather than being a stark, brightly-lit affair. It's odd, given that subways are usually lit in a brighter white so passengers can see better. Other than that it's a fairly bland, grey subway train. It looks modern and sleek, aside from the bullet holes, but there's nothing here to get particularly excited about. And you'll see it twice, so if you thought it was dull first time, it'll be even more boring the second time around.

Why've subway trains always gotta be so boring?

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Persona 5 (2015, PS3/PS4)

Oh boy! Persona 5 trailer! And it's got a whole bunch of trains!

Let's start with the most important point, which is that trains look to be playing a more important role in the game this time around. Trains have always been knocking about in the Persona series (see my earlier post about Persona 3, which, yes, I have been playing since then) but never in a particularly useable fashion. They're more for getting the player into the city, and then only used in map animations (in the case of Persona 3 Portable, anyway) from there on. Could we be seeing more in-train action? The top image suggests so, though it could just be a still from an opening cutscene. The day being in the left corner causes me to doubt this, however.

The second image isn't one to get too excited about regarding potential trains, but it is pretty sexy, and continues the red theme being used throughout the trailers so far. But the third image makes me more interested. A train crashing? Hooray! I mean not hooray because people will probably die, but hooray because maybe there'll be a train-based investigation! Will the train lead to your party investigating the subway? The driver looks to be either dying or becoming a demon right before the train plows into the station, so it could be a set-up for train things. Or it could be a flavour event designed to trigger people's awareness of strange things happening in the city. Either way, train crashes!

I'm always excited about trains being heavily featured in upcoming games! It's like senpai finally noticed me!! *~^_^~*

(As an aside, there appears to be a party member who is a cat, and this brings me great joy. Maybe I should do a Cats In Games blog too?)

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Hotline Miami (2012, Linux/Mac/PC/PS3/PS4/PS Vita)

Now here's a train you might have missed or forgotten about. In the first level of Hotline Miami, you're attacked by two guys who arrive on the Metro after the mission has supposedly been completed. It's not a terribly hard encounter - all you need do is beat them to death with a briefcase. But it's a twist on the formula which happens at the start of the game... and never again.

Trains can act as a method of delivering enemies into an arena quite effectively. They're large, capable of carrying many people, and can quickly travel to locations, usually on a timetable. Narrative timing is often a little too perfect (or imperfect if you don't think bloodthirsty mob members arriving to kill you is a good thing) so the act of a train arriving, dropping off enemies, and subsequently leaving is a little far-fetched, but it's a useful way of bringing the game to the player, particularly if the developer wants to create a boxed-in, endless feeling to an encounter. You could escape, but there's more enemies arriving! Gotta deal with them first probably!

It's particularly weird in Hotline Miami, because it's the only time additional enemies appear after the mission is complete and you're walking to your car (the mission with the SWAT team doesn't count because they just kill you on sight). But! It fits perfectly with the environment. The game largely takes place in apartment buildings, whereas this first level is just in a metro station. Why wouldn't extra guys appear on the train? It'd frankly be weirder if they didn't show.

The train itself isn't much to write home about. It's seen from above, in a game with purposefully "retro" graphics, so it was never going to be much to look at. But it's... grey? And has clear couplings between the coaches? So that's a nice touch. It makes a good place for slamming enemies against and bashing their heads in though, so that's something.

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Gravity Rush (2012, PS Vita)

Look at that train though. Just, wow. Look at that. On a goddamned handheld.

I suppose when your city floats in the air above a giant abyss, it makes sense to have some kind of transport system. Trains, though? I'm not entirely sure how the rails stay in place, but it's an engineering marvel that doesn't get nearly enough mention in-game. None at all, if memory serves.

The lure of Gravity Rush is the ability to manipulate gravity and let your character, Kat, fall in any direction. Naturally you can't do this forever, and so some kind of system had to be put in place to allow a hub system to exist with very distinct themes that can't simply be jumped into at any time. After unlocking a new hub area, the train line is restored, and so you ride on top and witness the world come to life as you pull into the station. It's a handy way to hide loading screens but still give a sense of progress, but you'll find a fast-travel point in the new area almost immediately, so you won't witness this momentous occasion very often.

The train itself is gorgeous. Jumping into first-person view and examining the train up close is tricky since it starts moving almost as soon as you get off, but it's worth it just to examine the level of detail on there. I'm a huge fan of cel-shaded graphics and comic book styles in general, so it definitely appeals to me despite it's somewhat blocky nature, but still. It's a weird mix of old and new, with a old-school colour scheme and the overhead cables powering it, but with a futuristic edge that's essentially indescribable. But you see where I'm coming from, right? It lacks a locomotive and is quite boxy rather than being smooth? I've been awake for 12 hours and there's another 7 to go before I have a hope of going to bed, forgive me if I can't make myself clear.

Side note: it is really tricky to take screenshots on a Vita.

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Watch_Dogs (2014, PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One/Wii U)

Oh, Watch_Dogs, I had such high hopes for you. Alas, I couldn't even bring myself to 100% you. Though I did do every single level of that bastard Drinking Game, which was terrible and I hate you for it.

True to it's Chicago setting, the game lets you ride the L-Train around if you really want to. It's a cute little addition, and one they even used in TV adverts, with that thing of Aiden stopping the train with his phone, casually stepping on, and setting off again. How cool is that?! Oh man, the possibilities!

Naturally, as with any Ubisoft game that came out in 2014, the implemented design didn't quite match up with the dream. You can use the L to fast-travel through Chicago, yes, but only to certain stops (obviously, I mean it's a train). That's fine and all, but if you don't mind wandering away from the campaign for a couple of hours, you can easily drive around to each of the CTOS towers, hack them, and unlock a safehouse to fast-travel to from anywhere on the map. Thus, the L is rendered useless.

You can, if you desire, stop the L with your phone. This could be useful if you're up on the railtracks, but you spend very little time on them, so it won't come in all that handy. And if you're stood at the station waiting, I'm pretty sure the train will just stop anyway. Also, it's massively inadvisable to go wandering over to a train station when being chased, since you'll probably be shot dead before you even get halfway up the stairs. Worse yet, there's only one mission involving the trains, and you don't even get to ride the damn thing, instead being tasked with quietly getting it started with your phone without bad guys noticing, then chasing it down to the next stop. It's a cute addition, letting you mess with the trains and sometimes use them, but on the whole it's totally unnecessary.

The trains themselves look quite nice though. If there's one thing Watch_Dogs got right, its the lighting engine, and the dirt and graffiti on the trains have never looked more beautiful in a sunset. The tiny little details are all there too, with the route displayed on the train above the front window, and all the corruagted sheet metal looking like, well, corrugated sheet metal. It's urban and accurate. I can dig it. Let's just hope the next game is a) better written and b) a bit more fun.

(images shamelessly ripped from a Google image search. original links because I feel guilty:

image 1

image 2

image 3)

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Wang Trains (Browser, 2014)

Don't, like, ask me to explain what Wang Trains is. It just is. It is this entity that exists. I love it.

I can explain how I found it, however. Cute Train developer Mark Wonnacott (Patreon link) CC'd my Twitter account (I have a Twitter! Did you know this? You should follow me) when someone he follows produced this not-game. That person is Alex Midgley. I have no idea who that is but LOOK LOOK AT THE TRAINS.

From what I can tell the game uses some sort of mathematical concept called Wang Tiles, which is hilarious and no one should change it. Now I Wikipedia'd it once and couldn't understand what the hell was going on, but I did fail Maths at A-level so it probably isn't my area anyway. What is my area is this: the game procedurally draws a series of train tracks, and then trains (represented by differently coloured rectangles) randomly spawn onto the tracks and roam them. The tracks don't connect for very long, so mostly the trains will go back and forth for a while and then disappear. But it's absolutely stunning.

Just, like, sit back and watch them for a while. Look at the madness of the web of tracks and gaze upon something mere mortals may never understand. It's a beautiful way to kill a few minutes.

"But where can I see this marvel?" I hear you cry. Why, click this link! Seriously though click the link. It'll be fun, I promise you.

(Thanks again Mark for the heads up and sorry Alex for taking so long to cover the game!)

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Borderlands 2 (2012, Mac/Linux/PC/PS3/PS Vita/Xbox 360)

Alright, so still images of the opening cutscene do not do this train justice. I would recommend going onto YouTube and watching it yourself to get a true sense of the beast (I suggest this one, just ignore the stupid creator's watermark).

The train, then. I'm not far enough into the game to know if trains become a real mode of transport for the Vault Hunters, but I do know this - this is one hell of a train fight. It introduces all four characters in their elements, uses the whole train to battle on, both inside and out, and still manages to throw in a few little jokes for fun. It's a nice looking train too, all futuristic and stuff. OK so it's a little bland, but it's getting the heck blown out of it by robots, so who cares?

The best part, of course, is the fact that the rails of the train are both underneath and to the side of the train. I guess the train could also be held from the top? That's pretty cool, ya know. It gets around the need for ground-levelling by simply holding the train from a different angle, meaning they wouldn't need to lay physical tracks on the ground if there's no way to do it. I guess that would be more cost-effective in the long-run, though designing the structures capable of holding the train at the different angles would probably take a considerable investment. It looks cool as hell when the connectors switch sides on the train, though.

And then it all blows up. As Zer0 would say, ":(".