Railworks is much more simulation than game, and to say that it's very much a PC game isn't really a stretch either. Its core 'gameplay' is extremely hardcore, not particularly accessible to newcomers, and the interface and menus do little to help this either.
In the game, you drive trains. This is sort of obvious, but the various career missions and scenarios (the difference between these other than granting achievements I'll never know) have you driving routes to pick up passengers, shuffling around train cars in railyards, taking goods to an end destination, or some combination of these.
Controlling the trains is, on the surface, a simple process. You have three main sliders that approximate physical controls inside the train cabin - throttle, direction, and brake. Throttle is self explanatory, direction basically controls the train's gearing, whether you go forward, backward, or sit in neutral, and brakes are, well, brakes. Some trains distinguish between engine brake and train brake, though their functional difference - like many of the other interface buttons - are not explained particularly well and the game's tutorial only covers the most basic of controls.
When it comes time to actually complete a mission, however, you'll be fighting those controls. Moving around a trainyard is a painstaking process, doubly so if you're in a steam engine, which takes a while to switch from forward to reverse due to the build-up of steam pressure. That movement is hindered by the game's implementation of switches, which you have to click manually and, made trickier by the game's camera and even more difficult by the low fidelity graphics. Let's say you need to manipulate two sets of switches in order to back your engine up into a set of cars and couple them up. You drive forward past the switch, stop, click the switch, click the switch behind that (after some fiddling with the camera to even get it to register), and then attempt to verify that you've got them set properly by going into the 2D map and checking the coloured lines. Problem is...those lines don't always display properly, and there is absolutely no way of viewing a switch's position in the main view because the tracks never change. This becomes even more frustrating on timed scenarios where you only have a handful of minutes to couple up all of the cars required (or decouple some and insert cars in the middle of your train) and end up botching the switches. With steam engines in particular, reversing over an improperly set switch will set you back over a minute.
Other than fighting the interface and coupling cars, the main challenge of the game is regulating speed. Most of the time this is not particularly difficult, although descents are more interesting as careful use of the brake is required so as to not exceed speed limits (my first successful career mission ended with a score of -142,000 due to speed violations) or jostle passengers around.
In addition to the interface issues, the rest of the game's presentation isn't great. The graphics might be cutting edge as of 10 years ago, particularly in the scenery. It's very Mount & Blade in that regard, though for something that has you adjusting a brake slider while driving along, scenery seems like it should be somewhat of a focus. But no, you've got 2D trees, low polygon hills and atrocious looking buildings. Passengers inside your train just sort of sit there staring vacantly into space too, should you choose to click the passenger camera button (you shouldn't). It runs well enough, though it's obviously not well optimized as moving the camera in certain positions (usually involving smoke from your engine) causes the game to chug quite a bit. And longer missions are occasionally halted dead by loading, which at first glance appears to be a hard lock-up. And the sound isn't particularly engaging either - the engines are appropriate enough but in exterior views the environmental sounds, including that of the tracks themselves, are not very pronounced, and there are a lot of bugs with the Steam engines that cause steam hisses to last longer than they should or stick in loops. The same happens with most of the horns.
But this is a game for hardcore train enthusiasts, with ~$2000 of DLC as evidence. There is something compelling about the game itself, but the issues quickly add up and make what should be a relaxing experience more frustrating than fun. The game will automatically boot you back to the menu on a handful of occasions - a popular bug involves two AI trains colliding somewhere along the route, which results in you being penalized and failing your mission - god help you if you're almost at the end of a one hour ride. Occasionally the trains will derail at low speeds, too, which is another insta-fail.
Overall it's fair to call Railworks 2 a simulation on the PC - it's got those awkward interface issues that plague many lesser quality PC releases and is a remarkably ugly game for something that has you sit in a train for hours on end staring at scenery. Yet it seems silly to even bother writing a review for it, because the market for a train simulation is so small that I'm sure that audience won't care about any problems unless they involve minute errors with a particular model of engine, be it rivet placement on the outside or inappropriate steam pressure at any given speed. For anyone who isn't a train enthusiast? It's only worth trying on the cheap, though it's also worth poking fun at for featuring the most hilarious, most egregious misuse of DLC on any game, on any platform.
