Open Transport Tycoon Delux
I originally picked up a demo copy of TTD many years ago. It was limited to just trains and that silly fourth pseudo-world. A few years later I found the game in a bargain bucket at some shop, promptly bought it and began rediscovering my nostalgic love for this game. Roll forward a few years and I discovered on my meanderings of the internet, OpenTTD - an attempt to recode and add new features to the original game.
Immediately I was hooked, having played this game many times online on the PC and on my PSP. Its a tycoon game through and through, you start off with a bank loan and your sole purpose is to shame your competitors with your extensive transport network and magnificent offices.
In TTD, you can transport any number of commodities, e.g. passengers, mail, gold, water, food, oil, livestock, goods, diamonds (and the list goes on.) Each with their own cargo rates depending on the terrain, distance and transport time. Establishing a good commuter transport network allows population density to swell at population centers as you allow easy access to workers. A steady supply of various goods and coal for the nearby power plant will help nurture nearby cities which in turn will provide you with greater resources to transport.
The most significant problem with the original game, which sadly has still not been adequately addressed, is the AI. Whilst it will provide simple series of opponents to compete against, the AI does a fairly poor job at path finding. Although it is fairly good at finding lucrative opportunities it goes about exploiting them in a poor manner, frequently judging the smallest path between two points to be comprised of roads / rails that involve several superfluous 90 degrees from the intended path. It does tend to ruin the landscape from the player's carefully, efficiently constructed transport system when the AI literally builds in circles.
Overall - 7/10
It’s hard to dislike its simplicity and elegance. The fact that many people keep coming back and playing it so many years after its original release says a lot for the quality of the game play even though the graphics are justifiably beyond their prime.
meanderings of the internet, OpenTTD - an attempt to recode and add new features to the original game.