Welcome to our review of Transport Fever 2: Console Edition, a transport creation simulator that shows the limits of this genre on consoles.
The classic transport simulation genre has a new gold standard with Transport Fever 2. Discover a whole new world by navigating transport routes through land, water and air. May progress and prosperity find their way! Provide the world with the transport infrastructure it needs and make a fortune with custom-made transport services. Watch your trains run on rails, your buses and trucks thunder along roads, your ships power through the water, and your planes soar through the skies. Carry people on their way to work or play, and be the reason cities grow and thrive. Deliver raw materials and goods to drive the economy. Experience the greatest logistical challenges from 1850 to the present day, and build a transport empire unrivaled anywhere else on the globe!
Free play offers a huge range of creative possibilities, while campaign mode re-writes transport history across three continents. Transport Fever 2 offers a choice of over 200 vehicles from Europe, America, and Asia, modeled in extreme detail; and with the in-game map editor, you can re-create landscapes from three different climate zones. Finally, the realistic transport and economy simulator, along with comprehensive modding support, round off the gameplay experience.
A huge game world is waiting for your railroads, road vehicles, aircraft and ships. Intuitive interactive rail construction tools and a modular construction system for stations make it easy to build and expand your transport empire; and thanks to a wide range of configuration options, every free-play game provides a new challenge, where completely different strategies can lead to success.
Three historic campaigns set in different time periods and located on three separate continents will challenge you with different objectives …only transport magnates will manage to complete all the missions! Voiceovers and cutscenes enrich the story and contribute to a thrilling gameplay experience, and even the free-play mode will challenge you with different achievements to unlock.
It is vital to adapt your company to the needs of the economy and cities: bridges, tunnels, switches, rail signals, one-way streets, light signals, and bus lanes are just some of the possibilities you can use to optimize the transport infrastructure. Even train stations and airports can be expanded with modules in order to meet different requirements; and various data layers help you visualize traffic volumes and emissions, and provide information for further improvements.
Thanks to the detailed game world, you can develop your very own virtual railroad landscape: the map editor provides the possibility to create countless different worlds; the terrain in the game can be adjusted and painted; and thanks to the extensive modding support, new creations are being developed constantly, which are available for free via the Steam Workshop and which can be easily integrated into the game.
When I think about games like these, the first to come to mind aside from games like Transport Tycoon, is the need for a keyboard and mouse for the true grind that represents these games. Prior to playing, I looked up other reviews on steam, due to the simple fact that they would have played on the KB/Mouse combo and usually not with a controller. Most favored the game though remarkably one guy said it was not a recommended game, despite him pouring well over a healthy amount of time into the game.
He mentioned the lack of change from the original game and I have no way to agree with this player, this is my first entry into this game franchise. What I did find, the entire way it is presented is really very pretty. It appears to be properly detailed and well-narrated, though the entire game was ruined by counterintuitive use of the controller. By default, the controller options just sucked.
From focussing on things to going all out on building your transport network, so many things were just not built for controller action, what I feared from the get-go. Not trying to be mean, I am certain this is a fun game to play and all, but simply not on a console. I felt pushed away by the irritations at times after a few minutes already into the game. Kind of wishing it would perform “more intuitively” if that makes sense.
In conclusion, Transport Fever 2 is probably a really fun game for lovers of the genre, but it just needs to be avoided on a console. It just never felt smooth or even “right”. Sadly enough, I did expect more.
