Finally, I get to play with vintage trains like some disturbed child in a play pin. That’s not the point though, in fact you’re supposed to be avoiding the other trains but who does that? Train Crisis takes you on one hell of a ride with its HD graphics and explosion animations. Initially I was expecting some sick bumper-trains game and maybe a couple of engineers who look like Ghost Rider. I might even go ahead and make something like that, call me crazy. The game features plenty of levels for you to play over and four eras, Industrial, Modern, Future and Far-West. It is really too bad that they couldn’t add any of those eastern bullet trains to this, just imagine that. The point here is to allow each train to reach their junctions safely. Which means that you shouldn’t deliberately crash them except in some cases when you are in a desert and nobody is watching except you and maybe some coyotes.
Train Crisis has a way of hooking you because it does get hard and it is scientifically proven that (some) people just love a good challenge. Luckily if you have got the right reflexes to guide multiple trains to their destinations then you won’t really have a problem here. The amount of close calls can be pretty exciting for adrenaline junkies. The simple point-and-click interface is not difficult to get the hang of. You can also use your finger to guide trains on the screen by modifying the track or controlling traffic lights that allow the trains to squeeze on by without any unnecessary casualties.
Now here are a couple of things that I am not fond of. For starters if you lose one out of four trains you fail. Now that’s understandable to some extent considering that losing and gaining stars at the end of a level is based on your degree of success anyway. One more thing to note is the lack of any real awards at the end of each level which either won’t matter at a certain point or really tick you off. Because each level provides hit-or-miss opportunities that can make or break your hard work, especially when the tracks get long. Of course these are just things that any good gamer learns to deal with as part of the default difficulty level.
Train Crisis is barely any competition for a good old Thomas the Train Engine tale over some warm milk and cookies but it is still a pretty darn good strategy game. It seems like a whole lot of companies are going for this niche these days and as anyone might expect, some are just better at it than others. Naturally, games like Train Crisis that come across as simplistic and broadly appealing have the best chance at success. The Lite version of this game limits you to two playable eras and I would recommend trying the game before committing to that very hard earned $0.99 copy because you know that kind of price for a pretty solid game is rare.