Plus, I have to admit, with the physics and actual “sim” stuff aside, TSW2 has its moments where it can be amazing and incredibly immersive.
Imagine the Quick Drive mode from TS2021 except actually interesting. You can walk along any route on foot and hop aboard a train to take over and perform its job (or simply railfan/trainspot if you’re so inclined,) or you can just choose that train directly from the service mode menu. The best part about TSW2, for me, is the free roam/service mode. However, beyond that, imagine TS2021 except even buggier and arguably even more questionable physics simulations.
#RUN 8 TRAIN SIMULATOR LOCOMOTIVES MOD#
Plus, all the locomotives have functioning switches and buttons at near study-level (not as good as the “Pro” locomotive DLCs for TS2021 or anything in Run 8.) The sounds aren’t exactly great, but they’re serviceable and better than default TS2021 sounds (that’s one of the first things I mod for TS2021.) Train Sim is still the one I fire up most often though. TSW2 is leaps & bounds better looking, more interactive, and lots of fun.
#RUN 8 TRAIN SIMULATOR LOCOMOTIVES UPDATE#
There's literally tens of thousands of hours of free content available through the workshop, and it looks like the recent TS update made it so that you can browse the workshop in-game based on what content you actually own, without having to scroll through a bunch of DLC-dependent content. A number of users, from what I can tell, are even DTG devs, or at the very least have made some of the official DLC. For about as long as TS has existed, people have been uploading their own user-generated content - scenarios for existing routes, fictional routes, even real-world based prototype routes all made inside the TS creator mode. Where Train Simulator wins out IMO is the Steam Workshop. TSW/2 is definitely the upgraded model, both in terms of graphics, and immersion (at least in the sense that a lot more of the buttons & switches are actually coded to be functional - hell, you can take a locomotive from "cold & dark" to fully operational in TSW2 if you want TrainSim just has a "start/stop" feature) whereas TrainSim just keeps getting a new year slapped onto the base model. Train Simulator looks like a game from the mid-2000's because it pretty much is.