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Sid Meier's Railroads (PC CD) | 
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| From: Take 2 Interactive
Category: Video Games
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £3.98
You Save: £16.01 (80%)
New (18) Used (4) from £3.98
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 800
Platform: Windows Xp
Genre: tycoon-strategy-games
Media: Video Game
Number Of Items: 1
Age: 11 - 18 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 5026555051354
EAN: 5026555051354
ASIN: B000F72C2C
Release Date: October 26, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: New, genuine and sealed
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review:
In a nutshell:
Railroad Tycoon returns in all but name as Sid Meier reinvents the series and business sims in general with completely real-time gameplay and surprisingly impressive graphics. The lowdown:
This may be the latest in a long line of Railroad Tycoon games but it actually plays very differently from the slow paced turn-based games of old. Everything occurs in real-time as you race to compete one of the preset objectives from around the world and from the 19th century onwards. Starting with a single train depot in the middle of nowhere you have to build up your rail network until you control not just transport but all the industries connected to it. This becomes particularly important when you're playing online against real players as you all compete to service the biggest cities and be first to take advantage of new technology. The premise may sound dull but the game itself will make a trainspotter of anyone. Most exciting moment:
As complex as the game may sound what makes it popular with ordinary gamers is that it's actually extremely easy to play. Despite the influence you have on cities and factories you only ever actually lay down tracks and stations and the computer handles the rest automatically. It also helps that the graphics are really good for what initially sounds like a dull strategy game. Since you ask:
Sid Meier, the man behind Civilization, pretty much invented the business simulator with the original Railroad Tycoon in 1990. Developer Frixais, which Sid help to found, is now owned by publisher Take-Two who also own the rights to the Railroad Tycoon name. Oddly the company decided not to reuse it for this revamp. The bottom line:
Sid Meier returns to the age of steam with the biggest train set ever made.-HARRISON DENT
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Horribly buggy and very shallow January 11, 2008
R. Scriven (London England)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Nothing like as good as the "real" Railroad Tycoon series. Even the first railroad tycoon was better than this. I can't even make it run for longer than 5 minutes without it crashing.
There don't seem to be any patches, my computer is far beyond the minimum specs for everything and yet every 5 miuntes or so it crashes. There really is no point in buying this.
 Enjoyable... Unless you have Vista! October 23, 2007
Ryan (Berlin, DE)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This being my first foray into the railroad tycoon series, I have nothing to compare it against from its own particular niche in the tycoon genre, but when stood up against other tycoon games out there, it falls short in many areas, even just by a small margin. For me, the biggest problem is that I cannot play this game for an more than half an hour withour experiencing a CTD (crash to desktop), even after installing the latest patch. This is apparently a known issue when playing the game on Vista, and a rudementary fix includes turning OFF the Aero desktop theme (you know, the one I paid an estra 20 bucks for?), as well as the auto-save feature (so if it does happen again, you lose your entire game, as opposed to just a small portion), and this is still no sure-fire fix. I had managed to play the game on XP upon first purchasing, and my first thought was that this game is really dumbed down compared to many of the tycoon games coming out on the market.
Indeed, the micromanagement elements in many games are reaching a point where it's more about balancing figures than actually playing a game, but this is too strong a move in the other direction in my opinion. The third ranking gripe against the game is that despite the absolutely gorgeous graphics are seriously let down by the clipping issues (when a supposedly solid object passes through another), most notable when laying double-track bridges, but prevelant in most areas of the game.
After these issues, you may wonder why it still has the relatively high score? Because the game is enjoyable, immensely so (when it works), and you can lose quite a few hours just perfecting your rail network into a masterpiece of engineering.
 JUST GOOD FUN June 26, 2007
Badger
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
So this isn't the tycoon type game it's just really good fun and the graphics are great had no trouble would recommend 100%
A let down June 4, 2007
Simon Carr (newbury, england)
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
I bought this game with high levels of expectancy (with Sid Meir in the title, why wouldn't you) only to be really disappointed.
On first load I had terrible trouble even getting the thing to install. The disk I had bought turned out to be as buggy as an anthill and I went through a number of system crashes only to find I still had something that didn't work. Not my system by the way, that's off the line this year and with high performance spec.
So I downloaded and installed the patch and sat back expecting to be amazed. Game play was an underwhelming experience. Now here I will admit that I am not a regular train head but I had bought and really enjoyed Railroad Tycoon (3) and had found it to be a great way to spend a little, late in the day, time with my 8 year old. I assumed that if that was good, then Sid would sizzle. In fact he didn't even fizzle.
The graphics were ok. The game engine was awakward. The maps were small and it just didn't feel like a game I would want to spend any length of time on. Since it has had 5 maybe 6 outings (the last one yesterday) and none of them have persuaded me that the game is any better than the poor rating.
What went wrong Sid???
Disregard the Killjoys May 20, 2007
Edward
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Well, I was nearly put off by these reviews. I'm glad i wasn't.
I've played all the Railroad Tycoon series, frankly i'm not a diehard gamer, i like to play for fun, not to beat competition. Quite frankly the depth of previous versions I never used.
If you ever wanted the perfect train set, beautifully done - this is it.
not the sort of train set involved in the minutiae of schedules, this is more iconic.
There are enough trains here to fill the gameplay, The graphics are gorgeous, and there just wouldn't be time to fit in any further depth to the game, even so, it often happens that you've just caught up with replacing your fleet with the newest engine and a new locomotive is released.
All in all the game is finely judged, all the elements fairly blended.
And there are two patches available to fix and upgrade the game - plus an extra scenario.
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