Now you can chug up and down the Bakerloo Line to your heart’s content. Mind the gap!
Dovetail Games might just be the most uncompromising games developer that you’ve never heard of. It bills itself as a bunch of enthusiasts making games for fellow enthusiasts, digitally catering for people’s hobbies in simulator form.
Those hobbies may not be the most glamorous ones around, but they are undeniably popular – Dovetail’s recent The Catch: Carp and Coarse game, for example, has to be the most rigorous fishing game ever created. Now, Dovetail Games has returned to its first love, trains, providing a first look at Train Sim World 2.
In a non-Covid-19 world, we would by now have had hands-on with Train Sim World 2, but instead, we had to make do with a remote press conference delivered via YouTube, albeit one which included enough gameplay and key information about the game to allow us to preview it.
What’s new?
The first element which Dovetail revealed it has extensively reworked for Train Sim World 2 is the user interface. The developer explained that in the past, it had concentrated on authenticity at all costs (and trains’ cockpits are complex, arcane environments), but in Train Sim World 2, it had decided to add elements to the user interface which would make train operation less fiddly. One example being a single-click means of opening a train’s doors; a process which, previously, would have involved interacting with various virtual buttons and levers.
The new interface is, in effect, a mildly context-sensitive dashboard which adds different elements according to what you’re doing in the game (that is, at rest, merrily chugging along the rails or approaching a station). You can also change the size of that dashboard bringing, for example, the speedometer and any signal warnings to greater prominence.
Dovetail also showed that it has made the menu system more intuitive in Train Sim World 2 by. For example, displaying a more comprehensive list of the available scenarios that you can jump into. While adopting a simpler interface isn’t going to suddenly bring Train Sim World 2 into the gaming mainstream, it is undeniably a step in the right direction.
Handling tweaks
One new feature that should satisfy the existing Train Sim World community is the arrival of what Dovetail Games terms Adhesion – essentially more authentic modelling of the real-life wheel-slip that occurs in scenarios such as when trains are going uphill with a full load. That addition to TSW 2’s vehicle dynamics, Dovetail explained, will bring a more authentic feel to train-driving in the game and will, for example, require adjustments when braking for stations in the wet.
Other new additions to Train Sim World 2 include a multi-layered Livery Editor, for adorning the sides of your trains, as well as a proper Scenario Planner that lets you essentially design your own gameplay. The Train Sim World franchise’s community is huge and vibrant, so it’s a bit of a shame that user-generated scenarios and liveries can’t be shared with others, although the latter can be captured and shared n photo mode. Dovetail hasn’t yet worked out how to add a multiplayer element to the game, although it professed to being very keen to do so; it said that it wants to get the single-player game to a state of near-perfection before tackling multiplayer.
Beyond the laws of physics
Undoubtedly the wackiest new feature in Train Sim World 2 is something that Dovetail has entitled Off the Rails mode. Trigger that, and you will basically suspend the laws of physics, in order to allow trains that, in real life, physically wouldn’t be able to travel on the track you have selected to be able to do so in the game.
Even if, say, you want to drive an electrified locomotive on a non-electric track, or a diesel chugger on the Bakerloo Line, Off the Rails will let you do so. The purists might muster some outrage at that, but it’s designed to be a fun fantasy feature, and can be ignored if you don’t like the sound of it.
Going underground
For a British audience, perhaps the biggest news regarding Train Sim World 2 is the arrival of the London Underground in the game, in the form of the entirety of the Bakerloo Line. Which has been modelled, as ever for a Train Sim World game, in immaculate detail, down to the iconic mosaics and decorations in different stations to the PA announcements and train-scheduling signs.
Following the blueprint established by the first Train Sim World, Train Sim World 2 comes as standard with a limited set of tracks, which will be followed by a number of others which you will be able to acquire according to personal tastes. As well as the Bakerloo Line, you will get the Cologne to Aachen route serviced by the high-speed DB BR 406 ICE 3 and DB BR 442 ‘Talent 2’ locos, and the American Sand Patch Grade heavy-hauling route.
Preserving your collection
Dovetail took pains to point out that Train Sim World 2’s Preserved Collection feature will be present and correct, allowing Train Sim World owners to import all the routes and trains they have already acquired. Train Sim World 2, then, has clearly been designed to appeal to Dovetail Games’ existing fan base, along with any others who have a deep fascination with all things train-related.
From the demos of the game that we saw, Dovetail has made Train Sim World 2 slightly more accessible than its predecessors, while the improved rigour brought by new features like Adhesion, along with the addition of virtual versions of safety systems that essentially allow trains to drive themselves more or less automatically (although will, if in doubt, slow your train which could mess up your scheduling) brings the game’s virtual representation of train-driving closer than ever to the real world.
Factor in the ability to virtually float out of your cab and fly around your train as it powers down the rails or sits in a station, and you will be able to find soothing, almost Zen-like gameplay in Train Sim World 2. While, on the other hand, you’ll also be able to indulge any fantasies you might once have had about becoming a train driver – every aspect of every locomotive is meticulously backed up with a tutorial in the game.
Given the current situation, with large swathes of the population still, understandably, reluctant to travel around too much, Train Sim World 2 offers a specialist but beguiling form of virtual escapism for the train-obsessed. Sure, it is by no stretch an action game, but when it is released on August 20, it looks well placed to set new standards for train simulation games.
