Train Sim World 4 feels a bit light for a full new game, but I love it anyway

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SHOULD I PLAY TRAIN SIM WORLD 4?

Play it if you’ve ever gotten excited watching a train pull into the station, and wondered what it’s like to sit in the conductor’s seat. If that’s the case, odds are good you already know about Train Sim World 4. Just like Train Sim World 3 before it, this iteration of Dovetail Games’ popular sim series isn’t so much a full-fledged sequel as it is an engine update that comes packaged with a new set of locomotives and routes. It also introduces some nice updates to the creaky Train Sim World engine, but these aren’t dramatic enough to make it look like a sequel in screenshots. Look, it’s more Train Sim World, so if you play Train Sim World, this is where the new stuff is going to show up from now on.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played three hours of Train Sim World 4. That’s been enough time for me to have a look around the new training center and run a couple service routes on some of the new locomotives, including the EMD F125 Metrolink in Los Angeles, the Austrian OBB 4024 on the S-Bahn Vorarlberg line, and the legendary steam locomotive Flying Scotsman.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT TRAIN SIM WORLD 4?

• Beautiful new high-tech trains. The classic-looking Flying Scotsman aside, Train Sim World 4 focuses heavily on modern, high-speed commuter trains that I found to be a dream to operate. I was surprised by how much I liked driving the F125 out of LA on the Antelope Valley line to Lancaster. The sleek controls almost concealed the fact that this is an engine powerful enough to pull double-decker passenger cars through the southern California canyons at up to 125 miles per hour.

• The new routes are scenic. Dovetail has traditionally taken flak from fans for its supposed lack of attention to US routes, but I haven’t found much to complain about with Antelope Valley. Leaving Union Station took me north and along the LA River, through Burbank, and up into the San Fernando Valley—it’s a view of American countryside you don’t really get in games very much, and I appreciated how true it felt to the real, often grubby-looking Los Angeles. Then there’s Austria’s S-Bahn Vorarlberg line, which offered stunning sunsets as fat flakes of snow landed softly on the windshield while I cruised between Alpine towns.

• New weather effects add dramatic flair. Those Austrian snowflakes are part of a new suite of systems that handle the weather in Train Sim World 4, and these may be the most visually striking upgrades of the game. The way rain and snow looked on my windshield was much more realistic than in the previous game, and the outside weather conditions were considerably more convincing as well. I loved seeing passengers waiting in a light afternoon rain, with their umbrellas out and their blurry reflections shimmering in the puddles on the platforms beneath their feet.

• Comes with a powerful editor on PC. Train Sim World 4 includes the Advanced PC Editor, which gives players access to the same Unreal Engine 4 creation tools the developers at Dovetail Games use to build routes. I didn’t get a chance to try this out, and the devs have said that you’ll want some experience with Unreal 4 development to really use this tool, but it’s exciting to know that they’ve packaged this powerful editor with the game. I’m excited to see what the community comes up with.

• Your collection comes with you. If you’re already a Train Sim World player, your existing collection of routes and trains DLC will import into Train Sim World 4, as long as you remain on the same platform or storefront. On PC, that means you’ll need to stick with either Steam or the Epic Games Store.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT TRAIN SIM WORLD 4?

• Lots of old annoyances have stuck around. While the new weather and lighting effects are pretty, it would be nice if Dovetail had addressed some of the issues that make Train Sim World look older than it is, like the terrible texture and vegetation pop-in, or the periodic framerate hiccups. The mouse-driven interface isn’t always fit for purpose, and I found some controls inaccessible at times: The windshield wiper setting on the OBB 4024, for example, can’t be manipulated with the mouse unless the power handle is pulled back and the brakes are engaged.

• Feels more like a patch than a new game. If you’ve hung around in the hardcore sim space at all, you already know that these games tend to move in slow iterations rather than sudden revolutions—a “new game” is often just an improved version of the last game. That’s certainly the case for Train Sim World 4, and while it ensures our train collections can stay in one place, it’s still disappointing to see how little has fundamentally changed. Long-time fans are likely going to bristle at the idea of being charged a fee to use their favorite train sets in an updated version of the same game engine.

💬 Will you be climbing on board for a new set of journeys with Train Sim World 4, or will you be staying on the platform for this one, waving as it goes by? Or hey, maybe you’re more like “Trains? Really? Wtf?” Let me know in the comments.