Transport Giant Demo

Tycoon-type video games have had tremendous success from the very beginning, mostly because they encourage creativity and logical thinking, while also being capable of providing players with countless hours of non-repetitive gameplay. However, the mechanics must be functional and fun, otherwise the long hours can become quite boring and annoying, especially if you need to deal with bugs or unresponsive controls.

Transport Giant is a title that actually tries to bring back the glorious Transport Tycoon game, which enjoyed enormous success at the time of its release, with a massive fan base still standing strong even today. Hence, you should not really expect any revolutionary changes or many new ideas, since this is more of a reboot than an attempt at creating something different, or better.

For starters, many of the same mechanics are being reused this time around as well, which means that the primary objectives are largely the same: the action begins in 1850 at the dawn of the industrial age and your goal is to create a transportation empire, in order to connect the factories with the resource providers and take the manufactured goods to the people who need it. Naturally, as time goes by, better and better vehicles become available, which allow you to move faster and carry more at the same time.

Trains are the most viable option in the beginning, since they are rather cheap and they can transport impressive quantities of goods from one place to the other. However, they quickly get impractical and cumbersome, since the infrastructure needs to be very well thought out from the start and any kind of modification is liable to break something in the overall system. As you advance through the years, on the other hand, other options become available to you, such as trucks, buses, airplanes, ships and even helicopters.

From a technical point of view, there are some modifications, some of which are good, while others might prove to be a deal breaker for some fans of the original release. Moreover, the lack of a proper tutorial can quickly become an annoyance to newcomers, while the isometric graphics somehow cannot relay the same amount of detail like the previous installment did, although the engine is definitely a lot more powerful. Despite that, the maps are quite large and you can certainly get lost in the game for a few hours, even the prospect of returning to play it the next day as well is rather small.

In the end, Transport Giant manages to fail on all accounts when it comes to keeping the spirit of Transport Tycoon alive, even if it tried very hard to keep everything as it was. Hence, the new additions do not work as intended and the mechanics feel very shaky, not to mention the variety of bugs that still arise on slightly newer systems.