A-Train 8

As it may be fairly obvious by now, managing a railway company is no easy task, since there are countless things that can affect your business, as well as many variables to take into consideration before venturing into a new town. However, you can take advantage of the fact that transportation is vital for any town, which means that the chances of being denied are pretty slim.

A-Train 8 is a sim game that combines the best out of two worlds, by enabling you to build a railway company from the ground up, as well as manage the infrastructure of an entire city. Thus, even if you have twice as much responsibility, the challenge is that much more exciting and it certainly makes for some interesting gaming sessions, as long as you have enough patience to take in everything the game has to offer.

In the beginning, you start off with a few bucks to your name and a small company that needs to expand as quickly as possible, while overcome any obstacles that might stand in your way to success. While the first town does not pose too many challenges, each one of them has certain gimmicks that usually make it hard for you to properly establish the desired route, such as bad infrastructure, difficult terrain or a general lack of population.

Fortunately, you also get to have a hand in the development of the city, since you can propose projects and place the desired buildings where you want. However, the rather tricky user interface may prove to be a bit too difficult to navigate at first, since there are many things that are not explained outright, while some may not be too intuitive even after you find out how they are used.

While the graphics are not necessarily bad, they certainly do not look as good as they should at the time of the release. As far as the gameplay is concerned, the combination of train sim/city builder may sound inviting and exciting, but the mechanics are not that well implemented and you end up with the shorter straws from both genres, since nothing actually works like it should in the end.

In the end, A-Train 8 bit more than it could chew and it didn't manage to rise to the expectations. Even if the game can be rather entertaining for a short while, things can either get too boring and repetitive, or you actually become frustrated with the poor gameplay mechanics.