Railroad Rush [rating: 4/5]

In the interests of full disclosure I’ll say this up front; I’m not usually one for the scheduling / collision avoidance genre of games. I’ve played a rather famous one that involves airplanes (FlightControl) for almost six months and I can’t crack the 20 plane mark. It’s almost enough to make a person feel inadequate.

Although Railroad Rush from RockaByte is in the same genre as its more famous plane landing cousin, I have to say I found it immensely fun and challenging. I guess sometimes it’s not about beating the game but the will to continue playing it. In that respect, Railroad Rush beats out a lot of competitors.

So as I alluded to earlier, Railroad Rush is a student of the scheduling / collision avoidance / landing at home base safe genre of games. In it you must guide varying numbers of trains around a train yard; getting the proper trains to the proper stations and avoiding collisions while you’re at it. While the lower levels are a bit more forgiving about number of collisions allowed and the consequences of those collisions, the higher levels will test your skills to the maximum.

Trains are guided around the yard by opening and closing junctions with a tap. Trains will move until they come to a closed junction and wait for your intervention. Be careful not to wait too long as the effects of indecision can be just as disastrous as moving your trains around too fast. Like all games in this genre, the effective player is one who is clearheaded enough to think quickly but not panic when things getting a little tough.

Besides the gameplay, which never seemed repetitive to me, Railroad Rush has a lot of nice features. Leveling is nicely varied and challenging. There are 30 tracks, each with an easy, medium, hard, and extreme tracks. So that is in reality a 120 different levels to experience. There are few other games that give you that varied an experience. The game is also OpenFeint enabled so you can not only keep track of your own high scores but post and read the high scores of users all over the world. If you already have an OpenFeint enabled game on your system, it will pick up your user and log you in automatically. Even as you play there is a scoreboard that displays your local score and the running leaders on OpenFeint.

Overall I really enjoyed Railroad Rush and I think you would too. This is certainly a game for all ages and especially one for any train fanatics in your family. Railroad Rush definitely does not go off the rails.

Price: $.99

The Good

• Lots of levels to keep you entertained.
• Fun for all ages.
• Non-repetitive play.
• OpenFeint support.

The Not So Good

• Graphics are a tad simplistic.

Reviewed By: Erin Peterson

Railroad Rush – iPhone/iPod touch Gameplay

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