I never really got into model trains as a kid. I’ve never been the biggest fan of click and shoot survival games. I find drawn out growth and level building stuff to be tedious. I very much prefer free movement to locked paths. With all of these elements present, I should theoretically hate Rail of War. But you need to remember, to a degree, I am a math guy, and four negatives multiplied together yeaild a very large positive!

This game is nothing short of awesome. It’s hard to explain the parallel, but playing this felt a lot like playing Mechwarrior 2 and 3 back in the glory days of PC gaming.

The artwork, terrains and explosions are all rendered with high detail and have plenty of variety, even when a straight single-texture background probably would have been forgiven. The enemies are re-used a lot, but not because there is a lack of unique sprites, rather there is just a metric shit-ton of enemies. And when you start getting surrounded and swarmed the firefights are just insane.

The sound and music really help draw you in, making it feel like a real war game, in spite the fact you are playing from a distant top-down perspective.

The gameplay is great. While you are limited to movement via railway tracks, there are plenty of railway switches. So even though your base path is pre-defined, it’s not just one straight trail, you can mix it up and get some extra bonuses by taking different branches.

The train itself is easy to drive, you just click a throttle guage and it starts rolling up to your desired speed. You don’t need to worry about moving and shooting at the same time, so you can really focus most of your attention on what counts: BLOWING SHIT TO HIGH HELL.

The gameplay alone isn’t enough to make this fun for more than a level or 2, but as you progress you do get more money and you have a very nice selection of upgrades you can buy. More train cars… guns for said cars… bigger and badder engines, and so on.

The levels are also a bit deeper than just getting from point A to point B, so you have to think from time to time. Plan your direction, scout the rail branches, and find fuel on the way. It’s not a fantastic storyline by any means, but all the small elements really do add up to make each level feel unique, rather then the repetitiveness found in other games of this style.

And if that’s not enough to keep you playing, you can also dive in and make your own levels with a very simple level editing tool.

The amazing thing is that this web game is pretty much just a demo for the full downloadable game. It’s so good I may even go ahead and get myself the full version!

But for now, I’m still blowing shit up in my browser and loving every minute of it!

[ Play Rail of War ]