Back when the original XBox was being anticipated by gamers, there was a stream of dissenters that suggested the console would end up being Microsoft's dumping ground for ported PC games. Ironically, this vision was pretty much realized by the Wii's immense trove of shovelware years later, rather than on the XBox platform. It also seems ironic to find Apple's shiny new iPad hosting a blatant port of the PC game Trainz. It's not a good marriage, so let's just get that out on the table immediately. You have never seen an iPad screen so cluttered with tiny icons, about which you know absolutely nothing for hours and hours. Learning the interface is one thing, but the icons remain tiny and hard to tap. The graphics redraw regularly and aren't very appealing to begin with. The buyer of Trainz is a person that doesn't mind overlooking rough edges to get at the information and simulation that he wants on this platform. If you can overlook these issues, there are many train models and some environments built ready to explore or run through on specific routes. For longtime fans of the PC game that want to take their Trainz on the road in a more portable package, Trainz for iPad may fit the bill. For almost everyone else, it will feel like five pounds of beef crammed into a one-pound package.

At the outset of the game, you'll be presented with four "blocks" of action. The Tutorials we'll delve into presently, so the remainder is made up of Routes, Saved Sessions, and Railyard. The last is basically a collection of all the trains in the game, and the parts of their consists. You'll learn that consists are the parts of the train you can construct by coupling engines with other types of cars. Some of the models here are classics that have a rich history and lots of detail, while others appear pretty bland and without much description. In all cases, you can do a full swivel and pan around the train model while you learn more about it. Routes is where you'll likely spend the most time. In this mode, you can explore Outback Australia, British Midlands, and City and Country USA, tackling specific sessions. Sessions are like missions within an area, and those provided here give players a good feel for the different tasks that one can undertake in Trainz. Moving freight cross-country, moving passengers through busy urban areas, or just cleaning up a cluttered train yard, are all contained in the game's sessions.

Beyond just playing what's provided here, the simulation extends to a full-bodied editor that lets you modify any route or session within a route. You can even create your own from scratch, or build on an established route in a sandbox environment. The depth of the editor can't be overstated. Because Trainz plays to the desires of model railroaders everywhere, you can literally design each and every element in the interface to suit your needs. The problem becomes one of control, more than anything else. It's not that you don't have the power at your fingertips, just that you really won't find the iPad an enjoyable place to do this sculpting. We have to think veteran players will be yearning even more for their PC after seeing this, instead of the other way 'round.

It's hard to rate difficulty in a game that only challenges you as much as you desire, based on settings you control. What you do face when playing some sessions is a series of rules and challenges that you'll need to complete. Breaking rules will result in your session being ended prematurely, basically a nice way of saying "Game Over." You can also shorten your session by speeding, which is funny considering this is a game about vehicles on rails, right? The fact is that simulation was a goal here, so little touches like this make Trainz more fun for model railroaders that want to get a feel for controlling a real rail system. Having control over a wide range of trains is like being the master of a station, and we thought this touch of realism was nice. Trainz doesn't give you a lot of handholding, beyond a basic tutorial. Sending you out of the game to a browser to view help videos is super lame, and earns big demerits for Trainz. If you can't build a help system into the game, at least make it easy enough for people to learn! What's here really caters, as we mentioned earlier, to players already familiar with the Trainz interface. If you know and love this game on PC, you're going to be able to jump right in and launch a session, but otherwise you're going to be hopelessly lost.

Trying to summarize this game's mechanics is like trying to summarize the Old Testament. You lose a lot in translation when you have to find a simple way to represent what amounts to miles and miles of controls. The smartest controls are on-screen dials that let you change the speed and direction of your consist. The option to control with a more complex set of machinery really brings the feel of a train's command center to the platform, but few people will be ready for it. Instead, you'll mostly fall back on the controls used by model railroaders the world 'round, which focus on speed and direction, plus a few other goodies like the horn and the lights. You will also find some smart and very responsive controls for the game's camera, letting you pan and zoom while the train is headed down its intended route. Design-wise, these are nicely executed and feel very natural under your fingers. The remaining interface is a proliferation of tiny icons you tap to activate, and desktop-style windows that scroll awkwardly and have the same "X to close" buttons as their PC counterparts. It's as if the team spent all its time designing the driving controls and forgot about the other material. Optimizing all the controls for touch and mobile might have been ambitious, but it would have made a difference for the novice player. At the end of the day, Trainz just isn't for those people. It's for the seasoned player of this franchise who owns an iPad and wants to geek out on trains. There's nothing wrong with that on one hand, but even for these core fans, we'll hold our ground and say that this just wasn't implemented in a way that takes advantage of the platform.