Recent reviews by julcocitron

FOR SUPER EARTH!

Basically one of my favorite couch party game :)

Relax, grab a beer, sit, and build yourself a chill...HUMONGUS CITYYYY

Very relaxing toy you should definitely give a try :)

Yep. Play this game. And lose track of time

First thing first: I don't really say you should avoid Train Valley 2. But I think you should be aware of a few things, specially if you're coming from the first game. Train Valley 2 is a beautiful game where you can see how much love has been put crafting those levels one by one, with some nice low-poly models, a great amount of levels and now a level editor! (That I still need to try) The community around it as well as the first user-crafted levels seems very promising and offering an endless possibility of levels to boost the lifetime of the game.

But...
...more doesn't mean better.
It feels like the things Train Valley 2 got in terms of content, it lost it in terms of fun, creativity, and even challenge (or is it just me who played too much already?). Like instead of building on top of the strong foundations of the first game, they decided to reinvent Train Valley.

I really liked the first Train Valley because it was simple yet hard to master at first and there was a real sense of progression through the levels. Levels which really had their own personality, with different trains, different environments, different music theme... Here it feels like they're almost all the same, with more or less the same difficulty...Some specific buildings are different but otherwise it's mostly a pack of low-polys with the same music in the background... (and God I love low-poly!). So far there's no night environments for example, and overall they don't have much personality.

And what happened to the 'special event' levels ?! The Rocket! The BIG train! It was the best levels from the first one, putting you under pressure sometimes, or with a strange challenge or storytelling and the few ones in Train Valley 2 just feel like a level with a twist (Panama) but no real challenge added in terms of pace or anticipation (still Panama a little).

And where's the creativity?! In Train Valley I took screenshots of my levels because I was proud of the way I made the tracks connect or cross each other in some kind of maze to send the proper train to the proper station. It didn't have all those huge fancy levels, yet it felt more creative in the way you crafted your lines. The somehow random appearances of new stations made you think twice before building something. And the randomness in the destination of the trains appearing in stations really made things more interesting.
In Train Valley 2 it's just...bland planning... There's still mistakes to make, crashes. But you're in control of the whole thing. YOU are the one sending trains everywhere. Why did they took that away (the random aspect of it) I don't get it...

Levels are bigger, you can build bridges and tunnels, yet it feels like there's less options to WHERE you can actually build your tracks as levels are already so full of details with the terrain giving more constraint in terms of creativity than offering a real challenge. There isn't dozen options to connects elements and you pretty quickly figure the only real optimized option.

On the interface side, I'm also not a big fan of the changes. It still an early-access so I kind of hope some improvements will be done in terms of lisibility and the way you can identify your objectives. But right now the icons system, for me, doesn't work. I always struggle at the beginning of a new level to identify the main stations (with workers), and spend a lot of time in pause mode to identify where I should go first because there's way too much information on the map. To me the difference between the building asking or providing resources isn't that obvious and doesn't really help your planning. Where the color system of the first Train Valley was so efficient.

In the end I'm curious to see where the final game will go as it's still in early-access. But I don't see them rewriting/rebuilding the whole first 30 levels available before the expected release at the end of March. I'll keep playing the game levels and I need to try the community levels and the editor. Maybe the true level gems lay there hidden.

What do you think?

Awesome party game :)

Non contents d'avoir allègrement ignoré leur communauté pendant le développement du jeu, voilà que la sortie de ce dernier est annoncée quasiment à la dernière minute, et même pas par les canaux officiels de la campagne de financement originelle. (A la base un pauvre tweet...)
Backer déçu, j'ai l'impression d'avoir financé les expérimentations techniques (un moteur de voxels moches) d'une équipe à la ramasse en terme de game design moderne.

Pour faire court:
-histoire ringarde
-gameplay archaïque
-ergonomie aux fraises
-graphismes moches. Les voxels, mal utilisés, ça fait pas du pixel art moderne. Ca fait dégueux.
(et ça me fait de la peine pour les somptueux artworks et illustrations produites pour le jeu)
-animations médiocres
-doublages quelconque.
-l'INTERFACE ! Sérieux ?! A ce niveau là d'absurdité c'est plus de l'incompétence c'est du sadisme.
-l'INVENTAIRE ! [EDIT] ON EST EN 2017 B.OR.DEL !! 2017 !!

Gardez vos sous et achetez un vrai jeu avec.
Et de façon générale, arrêtez de financer des projets de 'come back' de soit disant 'légendes du jv' qui n'ont rien produit de potable pendant 20 ans.

PS: 2Dark réussit une chose bien. Vous faire sentir que vous êtes en train de jouer à un jeu des 90's comme si rien n'avait été fait depuis 20 piges. Chapeau!

A gorgeous, emotionnal and beautiful experience.
I played it with one of my brothers.
I'm the oldest, dark haired. He's the youngest, blond haired...
We played together on one gamepad.
Needless to say that between our connexion and the character's relation, I felt really moved by the story and destiny of those 2 boys.

Highly recommended :)