Transport Giant review

Not an entirely accurate reproduction of Manchester...

Imagine a world in which there are no school teachers, no driving instructors – in fact, no education or methods of bettering your knowledge other than through your own devices. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the world of Transport Giant – a game so bereft of instruction you could have covered the distance from John O’ Groats to Land’s End before gaining even a basic grasp of it.

That’s not to say you’ll never work out quite what to do and how to do it within the game, but it’s certainly not easy to get there. It really isn’t a great start to embark on a game that is by no stretch of the imagination easy, with minimal in-game instruction and a sub-standard manual. It’s ironic that when we really needed a simplistic and annoying set of tutorials we didn’t get one.

Transport Academy

Things get a little hectic as you progress.

As the name might suggest, the game revolves around the building and management of transport infrastructure. This can take place in a variety of locations across America and Europe. You’ll also be playing across several transport ‘eras’ ranging from 1850 to the year 9000, though, of course, all technological improvement ends in 2050. No Futurama style flying cars to manage then? Shame.

To progress through the game’s ‘career’ mode various goals need to be completed, such as to deliver wood to a number of forts in 1850s America, to enable them to be built within a time period of ten years. Sounds simple doesn’t it? In truth, it really isn’t - at least, not initially. After triumphantly managing to deliver some logs to the fort you’ll find that you actually needed both to bring the logs to a wooden board factory and build a storehouse next to the truck station. It might have been possible to drag this information, kicking and screaming from the overly colloquial and surprisingly self-depreciatory manual. However, that would have spoilt the ‘fun’, and I just don’t go in for that kind of thing.

Technological improvement?

Nope, we can’t spot the university either.

Transport Giant puts me in a nostalgic frame of mind – back to the glory days of shareware and the like - back to the original Transport Tycoon. The latter of these two games is old, old enough in fact, to not run on Windows XP. This is unfortunate, especially as it’s perhaps the best benchmark for transport management sims out there.

With Transport Tycoon in mind, I set about a little test – a test with which I could accurately gauge Transport Giant’s true greatness. Two trains, check. Two train stations, check. Collision course, check.

It’s not a test that works on many games but in this case, it’s a fruitful one. You see, in one case, I was greeted with an explosion, numerous dead people, a newspaper headline and a substantial gap in the track. The other case, that of Transport Giant, yielded little more than two semi-transparent trains, passing through each other. Not entirely satisfactory is it? Looks like technological improvement won’t halt in 2050 after all – seems like it already has.

More Railtrack than right track?

It might not be in our skies anymore but rest assured, the Concorde lives.

One thing that Transport Giant does have in common with the management of a large transport network, is that it does require a hell of a lot of work. Even with the so-called, ‘easy’ objectives, there is a serious amount to do in each session and you’ll be kept rather busy indeed.

Each objective, or set of objectives, requires you to balance your finances, time and resources. This is all easier said than done when you take in to account the fact that building even simple gravel roads will cost you a bomb.

The management of resources is hampered by a poor scheduling system. Schedules are your means of sending transports to a particular location or set of locations. This can be done either in a loop or as a one off journey, but requires you to physically click on each location which, when managing a large amount of transports, is a lengthy and tiresome process. This also means that you’ll be pausing and un-pausing the game constantly just so that you’ll be able to complete your objectives within the time limit.

More fun than a travelcard…

The sea isn’t just for decoration you know.

As you might have gathered, Transport Giant is not without its faults. There are however a few reasons for hope. The interface is difficult in places but is functional and relatively intuitive - one part of the game that doesn’t need a great deal of explanation, mercifully.

The soundtrack sounds like something you might hear playing in a garden centre, or themed restaurant, meaning it’s the kind of thing that won’t detract from the gaming experience offered, though you might find yourself losing hours of you life to it.

Along with these limited plus points comes the fact that Transport Giant feels surprisingly robust in its programming. For the life of me, I don’t know why I get the impression that it’s ‘robust’ but that has to be something in its favour anyway. So, decidedly average then – preferable to being stuck in a jam on the M25 but not by too great a margin.