Train Conductor 2: USA

Train Conductor 2: USA – Overground, Underground it’s all the same to me!

For anyone who’s ever fancied giving ol’ Thomas the Tank Engine’s fat conductor a run for his money, you should probably give this game a closer look.

Although you haven’t got any talking trains, you do have plenty of problems to solve in the form of drawing the right track from one lane to another to ensure the train gets to its correct destination in safety. To do this you must use your thumb to swipe the train you wish to direct and draw the track to the correct destination track. This seems quite an easy task at first, and for even a klutz like me, the first stage or two are exactly that. But once you progress to the more advanced levels you must use all the skills you’ve learned up until that point to complete the task successfully.

To be honest the game doesn’t seem to actually do much more than count the number of trains you get safely from A to B and how many trains you fail to do so – but the total only ever gets shown when you have an accident and a train crashes into another. The whole time you’re left guessing whether you’ve got enough points to unlock the next stage or if you’ll have to go through it all over again.

It’s pretty amusing and certainly will keep your eyes peeled for any hint of which train needs to go where and arguably your fingers have to move even faster than your eyes can see to accomplish the task.

Each level you progress to has a slightly different twist or challenge to overcome, ranging from numbered or lettered tracks through to obstacles in the way preventing you from drawing a track to ghost trains and even fast and slow moving trains. To overcome this you may need to not just draw the tracks but use some skills to get the timing right to prevent having an accident. Tapping the train once will stop it dead in its tracks, and tapping it again will cause it to go again. Using this in combination with everything else will keep you entertained for quite a while.

Overall this is a good game which young and old players will probably find pretty entertaining.

Positives

Plenty of challenging levels to keep you busy

Quite a few novel differences to keep the challenge of each level fresh

Nice touches in the graphics

Negatives

Very repetitive

The music drove me nuts after a minute (thankfully this can be stopped)

Seemingly endless levels without any alternative difficulty settings

3 stars