Looking for a comprehensive Train Sim World 5 Review? We’ve got you covered! Take to the Rails and Traverse some of the world’s most Iconic Routes in some of the best-known locomotives. Here is our Train Sim World 5 Review.
Developed and Published by Dovetail Games, this simulator gives everyone the opportunity to know what life would be like as an operator of a Locomotive. The fun doesn’t stop there, as the experience can be enhanced with the use of numerous DLC provided by Dovetail Games, Rivit Games, and Skyhook Games to name a few.
Before the Game & Enhancing the Experience
Before the game is even loaded, during the installation process you will find something very interesting with whichever edition of the game you purchased (on Gamepass you only have the Standard). This is the amount of content you get from the game. Back when we were still on Train Sim World 2 you would only have access to the core of the game and TSW DLC would need to be separately loaded into the game. Since the inception of the Legacy Vault packs for TSW3 this hasn’t really been an issue, purchasing any variation of the DLC packs means you own the previous and future released packs. An example is owning Arosalinie: Chur, which is a TSW 2-era pack. If you purchased this for TSW 2 you would gain access to it within TSW 3/ TSW 4/ TSW 5. Likewise, if you have it in TSW 5 you would gain access in TSW 4/ TSW 3/ TSW 2. Overall this saves some money but as we progress down the path of released DLC, Trophies, and amount of Content to the Size of packs this becomes less of a desirable thing and more of a chore as you would need to redo them in subsequent games, on the bright side of this the trophies do unlock sooner provided you have done the action in a previous title.
Getting back to the main point we were trying to make, the game comes with a number of packs out the gate, depending on the content you purchased. In addition to the Regional Starter Packs which contain a Route in each along with the Train-ing center, there are also Standard, Deluxe, and Special Editions. Needless to say the more extravagant the sounding pack the more you will be paying… looking to Ubisoft for a Prime Culprit to this crime!
As the image above highlights, there is a, well not significant improvement in the different editions of the game, personally, the Standard Edition of the game is the best value for the content. While you would get 9 Routes and over 31 Locomotives with the Special Edition it will cost you over £100 here in the UK, which is not giving a good value for the content. The reason is simple, what you get with the packs is as such.
| Standard Edition | Deluxe Editon | Special Edition |
| 1. West Coast Main Line Route 2. Class 350 EMU Locomotive 3. San Bernardino Route 4. MP36PH-3C Locomotive 5. Frankfurt – Fulda Route 6. ICE-T Locomotive | 1. Avanti West Cost Route 2. Modern FlixTrain Vectron Train 3. Cajon Pass Route | 1. London Underground & Overground Routes 2. 2 Undisclosed Routes 3. Trenton Route – New York |
The Special Edition looks the best value as the Deluxe and Special have the previous tier benefits, however, if you take a closer look you will notice that you might own them if you own DLC from the other TSW games. The same can be said for the Standard Edition but you can’t get much lower than the Standard and still play the game unless you want to try the Free Starter Pack.
STORY?
While this is a Game, it is also a classification called Simulation, also referred to as a Serious Game, meaning that there is no real narrative that develops through the progression of events unlike in a normal narrative-driven or other driven experience. The main purpose of the TSW Games is, from this writer’s perspective, an educational and engaging journey to what it is like to be part of a cog in an otherwise larger set of events, that being the operation of a Locomotive. If you have ever dreamed of driving a Locomotive rather than just being a passenger then it doesn’t get much better than the TSW games. While there are “Tasks”, and objectives referred to in the game as Scenarios, these don’t necessarily fall in line with our Narrative criteria on which we base the Story section. In addition to this what we would identify as the narrative would need to flow in a fluid manner over all the events that follow either a Route or Locomotive.
Mechanics, Graphics, & Technical things
While the game is of a more serious nature, it teaches and is very educational. Taking you on a journey in 3 different ways, On foot, by train, and as an extracted camera. The way the game plays is very much like a point and click making it feel repetitive. This isn’t to say it’s boring or make you want to just drop it and pick something more entertaining. There were a number of times that I pointed the train in a direction, let it coast along, and put the controller down to just enjoy the scenery. That being said we won’t sugarcoat it, it will take a long time, not just to learn the basics but to progress.
Mechanically it might seem unrealistically difficult to play, especially when you change locomotive, but what we are referring to is the amount of controls which you have in front of you, just look at this control panel.
Graphically it’s a nice game, I personally would have liked it to have some smoother components that look slightly more real but it is a graphically pleasing game. From what I have seen I would have to say the Steam Locomotive was my personal favorite just for seeing the amount of detail under the chassis. Although not the famous Flying Scotsman or an LMS Jubilee class, which was featured in the Spirit Of Steam DLC for TSW2, the TT Stanier 8F is still a nice train.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, I would first say if you’re not a train enthusiast you are probably not going to enjoy this as much as you would or even should.
While we would personally prefer a more fast-paced or action-oriented game, it’s nice to have a slower pace and relaxing game that teaches and educates a user. As we have highlighted before, this is not a bad thing it’s just different, and as with any entertainment item it needs to capture our attention. For this author, it does and it is very engaging, the moral of this is don’t judge something from its surface, it’s easy to say the game doesn’t interest you, but experiencing it and then deciding with more information makes it more valid to defend.
Before we continue with a long list of things, I feel it’s time to address something that annoyed me relatively recently while exploring Train Sim World 5, this is something that is called Decals. Decals, as the name implies are things that sit on something to add some more detail, however, for this, we are looking at the world of Train Sim rather than the Trains. We’ll talk about the train later on and how this affects the Train however the world is still part of the game and therefore I need to direct attention to the glaring problems. Firstly there are two separate types of Decals in games, one which is Geometrically based and the other is Image Projection. Train Sim World features both and both are outlined in the images below.
Now typically it’s rather difficult to identify between them, however, in Train Sim, it’s not that difficult, and here is why. Firstly, a Geometry-based Decal will flicker when it is too close to another object in the world, much like what we talk about later in the Console on the Trains. This flickering can be referred to by a few names be we are going to call it Clipping. Secondly, the Image Projection Decal is pretty much what it says on the tin and is a flat 2D image which is cast onto a surface, the downside is when the Geometry of the surface it uses changes. By now I’m pretty sure you know where this is going, for culprit A, the Geometry-Based Decal is a distance from the intended Surface object and for Culprit B, it’s a case of Surface Deformation… Enter the Damage.
Overall the Geometry Decal is not all that bad in this example, it’s close to the ground where it needs to be and unless you are looking at a deliberate angle you can’t notice it is not right… Except there is no paint effect from the underlying surface which was what caught my attention. As for the Image Projection Decal, well what can I say except this is the worst thing to have in a game. Honestly, this should have been caught in testing as it stands out as a glaring mistake that isn’t even hidden in the world. It’s situated on a platform you pull up on in one of the Scenarios in the Frankfurt pack. You have to stop here and while loading passengers you can look around. Even if this wasn’t the case there is a Collectable not too far away in this location so the gamer is going to see it.
While the game is a marvel it doesn’t go without its flaws. The biggest things are minuscule in comparison to everything in the game. The main culprit I want to address here is the overall aesthetics of the Locomotives. The way the game’s engine generates its aesthetics is by using 3D models broken down into a 3-pointed object called Tri’s, this is what covers the shape of the object. These Tri’s are added together in the single object to make a total count, this in turn needs to meet a criteria set at the start of the project. In a roundabout way, this makes the game run. Getting back to the point in question, on some objects and even Locomotives the total Tri’s allocated for some parts make the object not as smooth or sharp as it should be. In addition to this, there is something referred to as Textural Fighting or Clipping where parts of the train terminal argue with the information.
Despite these little teething troubles with the game, it is fun and the Texture problems are only on certain Locomotives. What was really an irritating and more annoying thing was the fact you can leave the driver’s seat, and even the Train while it is in motion, needless to say, this is more dangerous than it sounds. I wanted to test something, and because of this, I set the train in motion and jumped out, expecting the train to Coast to a stop at 5kh, and stood on the track. Unfortunately, the Train doesn’t exactly have the simulated effect of running the on-foot character down as much as the camera clips through the train. This was a massive disappointment to such a good game, to say the least. Doing this also prevents the player from moving around, apart from the camera, and thus breaks any job you happen to be undertaking.
There are still the little problems with the game like in any game where there are gaps in the world, random floating objects intersecting others, and the like. some of the biggest problems here are stupid problems like where the placement of the assets is clearly wrong, the Plants growing through the Tarmac is a real obvious one, another is the Rock placement on the raised platform that is cutting through the railing. This second one is more upsetting because it is right next to a map location, so it should have been fixed and amended in testing as it is somewhere the player will definitely go if they are looking to complete all locations.
In addition to this, there are some really bad problems with the game as you traverse the worlds of Train Sim World 5. You might be sitting there reading this wondering how much worse than what has already been highlighted can Train Sim World 5 get, well the answer is astounding. Personally, Train Sim is a fantastic game bugs and problems included, but sadly, this problem was too glaringly apparent not to be seen. When going along in your locomotive you can sometimes see road traffic and at a distance this can be really nice, however when you get too close, meaning using the external camera or photo mode you can see there is a really nasty mess. Now I’m no scientist but I know that no 2 masses can exist in the same space meaning you can’t have a vehicle, in this case, phasing through the world, or flying. Science teaches us that there is something that makes us not float off into space called Gravity and something else called Physics. These 2, almost primal laws work together to form our understanding of things in the universe. Within a simulation, these things normally would need to be set up, in Train Sim World’s case this works to an extreme, by making wheeled vehicles travel through the ground.
One of the things that should be addressed is the Parallax Mapping effect of the Trains Track Bed. That is a massive mouthful, believe me, but here is what it means. TSW runs on the Unreal Games Engine, this can apply to any games engine really but since it is Unreal we are using it as an active example, and within the Material Editor there is a way to turn the flat texture image into a deformed effect, this is known as Parallax Mapping. This is an oversimplified way of looking at it but what it does is make something look like it deforms from the angles it can be viewed from, different from a Normal Map or Displacement Map, the Parallax is a rather powerful tool in the artist’s hand. What this means in terms of the game is that, to put it bluntly, it looks wrong. Do keep in mind that this is something that you will be seeing very regularly since it is a constant in the environment you are traveling through, but the reason for this is that it rides up over the sleepers at times and as you get close sinks back down. Think of it like a distance field, in games, these are most often referred to as LODs (Level Of Detail) which get applied at a set distance from the player. The idea of them is the closer the player is the more detailed the item in question is, so the farther away you are the less detail and more resources can be saved. In older games, you see this where the world spawns suddenly as you get close or it phases in “clipping” to the distance of the player’s cull zone. In this game, because of the speed of the train, it is made really rather apparent what is happening and why it is, which was somewhat of a distraction outside of the cab and I found myself wanting to roll my Left joystick to the Left or Right to avoid it, Unfortunately, unlike a car this doesn’t work.
As a side note things like Live Maps, so you can see the route and other moving Locomotives in the world while you are traveling, Livery Creator so you can craft your own unique look for your Locos, and even the subtle improvements to graphical capabilities over the previous title I played are impressive. Even the limited customization of the character to be the avatar that you would like best was a nice touch, despite the game being played through a First-Person Perspective it was nice to know I kind of had a body… somewhere.
One final point that I would like to make is the fact of the mechanical systems employed within Train Sim World 5. By this point, I have run around many different locations in the Locomotives and still find new things that catch my attention. One of the biggest is the fact of the Braking and Loading/ Unloading of passengers. One of the runs I had I applied braking force too late and overshot the platform, however, the Passengers were happy enough to climb off onto the rails and carry on their everyday lives. While this was entertaining this was a bad experience and only added to by the passengers, what we can only describe as Warping to their seats when boarding.
Additionally to this when wandering around the world on foot you can find some neat somewhat hidden gems like what it’s on the computer screens in the Training Centre. In case you don’t understand the image below the Right screen is the 3D Package 3D Studio Max, which is presumably used to construct all the aesthetics within the game and make the animations among other things. The Left screen is the Unreal Engine 4, and conveniently, both screens show the Training Centre which is where you are in the game.
Looking for more reviews to read? Be sure to visit this page and discover a wide range of informative and insightful reviews. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions.
