Trains. Nowadays they're a staple in video games like sewers or castles. If you end up finding one it'll probably be in motion. You might be riding it or trying to blow it the hell up. I've found that train levels are mostly a tricky affair. They might have you wasting a small army in cramped cooridors. Or maybe it has loads of tricky jumps. It might even have you hit a bunch of switches to open the lock and change the tracks. However a tough train level doesn't affect my love for trains or riding the rails in general. Trains are awesome and so are the levels based around them (for the most part). This list is all about the games I've played with prominent train stages.
It might go without saying that this list might contain spoilers. So if I list a game you haven't beaten, you might want to skip it.
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If you choose your route in Star Fox 64 and end up on a planet called MacBeth, you'll be driving a tank and attempt to blow up a supply train. Now, I don't know why the planet is named after a Shakespeare play, but I know that the train driver loves to talk. He looks like a gorilla and loves to say "Step on the gas!", "Detatch the rear vehicle!", and "I don't think they're taking me seriously!" You can shut him up in fantastic style by shooting eight annoyingly placed switches and changing the track. If you're successful, you'll send him careening into a supply base . . . followed by a massive explosion (even by Star Fox 64 standards). Massive explosions and high impact railroad demolition make MacBeth a favorite of mine.
Mega Man 5 has a robot master named Charge Man. His design is based off old steam engines (cow catcher and everything) but that doesn't make him look any less goofy. The stage comes off rather surreal when you realize that you're catching a ride on a train in order to fight and defeat a guy that looks like a train. Between that, the robot chickens, and the sweet music, the whole situation is kind of funny if you think about it for too long. Depending on your sense of humor it gets even better when you actually beat Charge Man and get his power: the slide kick. What that has to do with trains and charging . . . I don't really know.
The back half of the second stage has Buster Bunny riding a train in pursuit of Montana Max with plenty of stolen loot. For a second level, the train part was brutal. You have to do a ton of timed dashes and careful jumps to make it from one detatched train car to the other. You'll even have to platform across flying wood to get to the front of the train where you're rewarded with a psuedo boss fight- destroying the train engine entirely. However once you realize that the train is totally out of control, you have to escape on a handcar with some button mashing. At least the music was pretty sweet. Watch out for that jerk with the trick walking cane. Asshole.
GoldenEye 007 decided that riding Trevelyan's train needed to be longer and include more shootouts behind packing crates. Absolutely brutal on 00 Agent, you'll have to spin around corners, abuse sliding doors and clean out every single cabin, car, and bathroom in order to make it to the front of the train. There you had to ice Ourumov (maybe shoot Xena to buy some time) and then cut your way to safety . . . I mean, outside the train where you can be gunned down by a few dudes hiding in the shadow of the tunnel. A tank would have solved all these problems with less trouble I think.
The Khallos Express! Groovy! Right dudes? No? What? More shootouts in a narrow train where every tick of health counts? Well, what do you expect? TimeSplitters has its origins in the team that made GoldenEye possible. Leave it to them to include more spies, trapped timed sections, and submachine guns as you fight your way from the back to the front. You'll also shoot down some helicopters in a paradox inducing time travel sequence. This definately fell on the side of crappy train levels and only the music saves it from total damnation.
This is definitely stretching the criteria of the "train stage" but toward the end of Body Harvest you decide to hit up Siberia for your space bug killing needs. After running a combine over some zombies you can get in a train and ride the rails down to a gas factory. It was definately a high point of the first zone if only because you were driving a train with machine guns that could waste any crazy bug in your way. True, you can only go foward and backwards since you're on rails . . . but a train with machine guns! Pretty sweet, I'd say. Not to mention not a whole lot of things could kill you at that point.
If you played Shadows of the Empire long enough to get to Ord Mantell, you could check out Dash Rendar riding the hovertrain on his way to scrap IG-88. In some respects it feels like everything is trying to kill you in this stage. Robots, guys on trains, the train itself, random turns. Making things even more complicated is finding challenge points before the train you're supposed to jump onto dissappears or takes the wrong turn. Practically the only thing going for you is the end of the stage where you can have a shoot-out with the badass IG-88. Who will probably kill you a few times depending on what difficulty you're playing. Sure, it's a train of the future- or long ago- or whatever. Yeah. It's still a train.
Trains and Gears of War do not mix. From a Berzerker on the caboose to Reavers in the sky to goddamn RAAM . . . there isn't a whole lot of nice things to say about Train Wreck. Sure, you get to see it crash but does that really make up for playing this stage on Insane? Does playing the turret section over and over again only to be ripped apart by some Locust general make for anything but frustrating game play? "Aw, come on!"
The Excess Express from Thousand-Year Door has you riding in style for the greater part of chapter 6. You solve mysteries, chat it up with other passengers and get waylaid at an abandoned train station. Most of your fighting takes place off the rails, but the boss is on the train and there's someone who will kill you if you read his diary. Trains are serious business, even when Mario is involved.
It's 1885 and you're a time travelling Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. You must be playing the "Bury My Shell at Wounded Knee" stage. Now, this train stage doesn't make huge use out of the fact you're riding a train other than motion in the background as you force-feed justice to Foot Soldiers but hey- you are riding a train. You have explosive barrels, boxcars, and a cajun crocodile named Leatherhead to deal with. But other than that this stage will fly by as a western stage that doesn't make a whole lot of use out of the western genre except that you're on a train. They used a ton of those back then, you know.