Recent reviews by BigVern

Really wanted to like this, but four hours in (beyond the refund window) not feeling the love.

It looks and plays like an unfinished game, early beta at best. Given the high recommended PC specs the graphics look dated and cartoony compared to the likes of Snowrunner which manages to look natural and realistic and ironically runs much better.

While there are some tweaks to gameplay with supply chains etc., it still comes down to grinding the few fields you get at the start to try and make enough money to expand. Doesn't help on the US map the game starts you in August which is already the end of the planting season for the basic beginner crops you can dea with using the limited start equipment. Of course you can go off and do contracts for other NPC farmers except... many of the jobs pay less than hiring the equipment needed actually costs. Like I said, poorly balanced economy and a beta.

While farm vehicles now have some feel of weight and inertia, try going backwards and you immediately jackknife whatever equipment you're towing followed by the tractor sliding sideways across the train. NPC road traffic is abysmal, zero collision avoidance or they will start to overtake then stop dead in the oncoming lane.

Did I mention this seems to be a rushed out beta that had minimal testing?

Things may improve once some mod maps appear (the default ones as per previous titles are quite bland with postage stamp fields) but this cannot be recommended at a AAA asking price of £42. Should have been put out as a mid range £20 - £25 which is more what it's worth.

I bought this on account of it being delisted and a microcosm of the UK particularly northern landscape.

It's not bad but after a few hours play it does seem rather lightweight and I agree with other comments that the game seems to do its best to get in the way of actually playing it. Constantly nagging to go here, there, do this event. It also suffers from the usual issue of arcade racing - no matter how well you drive your car and how much you lower the difficulty level the AI always has a habit of punishing the slightest mistake or imperfect line, leaving you in the dust to finish last.

The map itself is quite small, this is no TDU or - showing my age - Mobil Rally Championship from 1999 with its punishing 15+ mile real life courses. Most of the races or events I've tried so far have been very short, over in two or three minutes. Some are quite laughable with your vehicle just bursting through walls and fences as if they weren't there.

There are hundreds of cars to choose from, but I suspect the performance and sounds are cloned and aliased to some extent.

I'm giving it a (just) positive review as it has brought a smile or two to my face and provides a laid back driving experience in small doses. But I'm kind of glad I bought this on deep discount and didn't pay the £80+ full RRP for the Ultimate Edition.

Will also be interesting to see what happens with the online and MP environment once the game is pulled fro sale. How long will the servers stay up?

It's not a bad route but rather limited.

The battery electric loco can be a pain. the view from the cab is very poor so you end up driving from external view. At which point you are no longer monitoring the ammeter and voltmeter and end up stalling the loco after depleting the battery. I have taken to cloning the scenarios and swapping in the Class 14 Teddy Bear instead. A somewhat more lenient mode would have been nice.

Also only buy this route if you like shuttling back and forth doing low speed shunting, as that's all that's really on offer rather than a more expansive run down the Cardiff Valleys.

Well it is quite a short route, almost TSW short but unlike the freeware version which goes all the way from Southampton to Weymouth, everything is included and you don't need to go on a scavenger hunt. The route looks nice, though don't expect to see much of the New Forest from the cab. Just like the real railway these days, you are for the most part driving through an avenue of dense trees and overgrown scrub.

The train pack is excellent - two EMU's plus a Class 47 and the Peppercorn steam loco. Way better than TSW's stingy one route, one train policy.

If you happen to own the Bossman Clan Line that also layers in with a couple of railtours.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend at full price but if you can grab for 40 or 50% off in a sale, worth getting.

Very poor quality add on which in no way, shape or form in both its and the host sim lifecycle should be sold for nearly £27.

As noted you get hardly any liveries in the pack, only one I could see was Air France.

Everything about the aircraft looks dated. Default in the cockpit points at the ground because no one has bothered to update the config files to cater for FSX.

Sounds are appalling, more like a Gameboy than the throaty roar of a DC10.

Flight physics appalling, I couldn't even take off with less than a full payload and fuel at 160+ knots.

Whoever oversees these add ons, whether it is Just Flight, MS or Dovetail should be ashamed at still offering this item for sale. About to refund.

Based on my relatively short play time so far, got to say Nebraska is very good. SCS have realised that it's not exactly a tourist hotspot like California, Wyoming or Colorado but tried to make the experience interesting nonetheless. However, like Kansas and Oklahoma, it's another essential part of the jigsaw en route to the grail of the East Coast, South East and Chicago. The price also reflects that. I'm also quite up for the grain loading and unloading challenge, my only suggestion being they should lower the level requirement to buy the grain trailer. Currently set at L9 which means if you are doing a new profile, a bit of grinding required to unlock.

This is an add on where I really wish Steam would allow neutral or percentage/star based reviews.

It's good, but does seem to be flawed in some areas.

First time I tried to run it, sounding the whistle caused TSC to immediately CTD. Tried with a clean boot and not runnng any other route beforehand seemed to cure that issue. Certainly a nice looking loco but as others have commented the sound is a little quiet. Physics seem a bit odd - it doesn't take much at all to induce severe wheelslip and there seems to be some sort of speed cap in place whch means regardless of gradient or throttle and reverser setting you cannot go over 40 MPH.

The loco also doesn't consume much if any coal or water - after 45 minutes running, the majority of time under power, the coal in the tender had only reduced by a minute amount and the water not at all.

So like I said, good but not up to the standard of Smokebox or the locos we get from Bossman and Victory Works for the UK scene.

My rating therefore 3 stars, *** out of 5.

Well I finally caved in and bought Zusi 3 again, after having previously purchased and refunded on getting seemingly stuck at the starting screen. This time things are going much better, helped by watching a couple of YT Tutorial videos.

It’s not a cheap investment at @£58 but on balance that’s only the price of 2 x DTG route DLC’s In return you get a package of 100’s of km of route, many different German traction types and rolling stock with full timetable for the day or part of the day. It’s not as pretty to look at as TSW or even TSC but at least it appears more natural. I’ve only scratched the surface at present with a couple of basic runs but thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Game options include a “chaos” slider which increases your chance of random events or other hindrances to affect your train running. A feature DTG remain rather timid about putting in TSW. Also included with the Aerosoft version is a complimentary copy of Ziegler Tools, aka Transdem, which is essential if you want to try and create your own route. Well the editor in Zusi 2 was above my pay grade, maybe 3 will be different certainly going to take a look.

Downsides? Well no save game is a bit of a bummer, means on longer routes like Obereruhrtalbahn you need to find a means of picking up a train at the station where you left off, obviously losing any chaos progress on the previous run. The interface is very basic, no flashy menu screen like TSW or TSC, just file folders and lists. However there is a third party website which acts as a database to help you pin down routes, stations or motive power that you fancy driving.

In conclusion, definitely a worthwhile purchase even at the relatively high front end price, but you are getting a lot of bang for your buck/pound/Euro. Like Run 8 for the US it’s aimed more at the hardcore simulation market so don’t expect XP/AP, Mastery, collecting teddy bears or any fluff like that. A train game for train people.

Well I have to give this DLC a neutral review despite the positive rating.

For £34.99 IMHO it provides rather poor value for money compared to some of the other routes.

The Nambu line is only about 35km albeit quite a challenging drive with several gradients and constant speed changes. Just over very quickly.

The Tsurumi Line is nice, sort of an industrial backwater route which looks more run down than you might expect in Japan. However again it is very short and while there are a couple of branch/spurs which offer a slightly different run the replay value is questionable.

With hindsight I would not have paid full price for this though given Ongakukan's apparent reluctance to put their stuff in Steam sales you might be waiting a while for a discount.

This is my second go at writing a review for JRETS. The first was quite negative and I actually refunded the product, before relenting and buying again.

Well I have been getting some fun out of it. The presentation as one might expect from a product endorsed by the real railway operator is quite good.

If you are coming to this product from a train game such as DTG's Train Sim Classic and Train Sim World it is important to realise the use of a video clip to generate the driver's eye view does pose quite a few limitations particularly compared to TSW where you can move freely in the world and on the trains. In fact the use of video footage to provide a cab view was popular for a short time in the Western markets in the late 90's, before Microsoft Train Simulator arrived and showed the advantages of using a full game engine.

So essentially what you get with JRETS and it's routes are:
A 2D cab of the train you are driving with the video clip depicting the line ahead.
No side or external views or virtual head movement.
The route(s) are only featured in one direction (the file size is already quite large just one way).
No time of day, seasonal or weather changes to external conditions.
Things can look a little odd when passing external items which are moving, particularly other trains which will just freeze frame if you stop or people who look like they are speed walking.
No variation in the path your train takes across the route.

However the video clips are generally of good quality and fairly smooth. Sound is an area where JRETS excels whether it is the train traction audio or ambient effects such as bridge rumble or tunnel reverb - DTG take note. However although the game interface is well optimised for English, most of the announcements or audio prompts you hear in the cab are Japanese only (the developer could maybe take some liberties here and add or replace with English localisation).

Gameplay... Well again if you are coming from TSW with its all day timetable, several scenarios and the Journey mode which gives a kind of "best of" experience, JRETS does fall a bit flat. Each route only seems to come with a bare selection of timetables to choose from. So far as I can tell nothing else gets unlocked as you progress further into the game. In fact, and much to my surprise in a Japanese train driving sim, there is no feedback to the player at all. No performance review or summary at the end of the run, no record of how many km you have driven in the game. Not even (that I can see) even any Steam achievements. In fact you can't even save a run in progress. If you need to quit and resume later all you can do is next time skip to the last station you reached on the previous run, to start a new one.

The core programme comes with the Keihin-Tohoku Negishi Line which is 81km through Tokyo. Can get a little tedious as it is very much stop/start. There are also short demo sections for three of the DLC routes you can buy as add ons.

As regards pricing, well I have to say a little expensive for what it is, again looking at the other sims out there. The DLC is also rather expensive and at the time of writing this Ongakukan have not offered any discount on the core game or any of the DLC in Steam periodic sales. However the flipside is, if you want to experience Japanese style train driving and on the JRTES routes there are very few other options available to the Western consumer. So it is what it is. Despite some of what I wrote I am enjoying the game and it does provide a unique take on the genre.