It's the 7th iteration of one of our favourite sims, and yet still nobody at Dovetail can spell or be bothered to spellcheck the word 'RECIEVE', which appears practically every time you drive a locomotive! Come on Dovetail, sort it out, it reflects a lack of care on the entire game! On the plus side, the UI and main menus seem much more friendly, we love the new title music, and, it would appear that, somebody at DTG has been listening to us console railfans and the controller sensitivity is now PERFECT, and along with improved draw distance and LoD (Level Of Detail), we are delighted to RECEIVE these upgrades.
Another nice addition is that you can now also speed the exterior camera along (without the need of a mini keyboards 'shift' key) at a rate of well over 100mph, meaning you can keep up or overtake most trains to get those cool passing shots. All the usual features are present and correct from earlier versions (Training Center, Creator's Club {Formation Designer, Livery Designer & Scenario Planner}, Mastery Rewards, Photo Mode, In-Game Store etc.)
Train Sim World 7 launched on Xbox Series X/S, PC and PS5 in September and it's the biggest entry in the series yet — three new core routes, a new Freight Hauler mode, and Beginner Controls that finally make the hobby more approachable.
Florida Tri-Rail is the series' first trip to the Sunshine State — forty-five miles from Miami Airport heading North through Fort Lauderdale to Boca Raton. You get the BL36PH and F40PH-3C with Rotem double-deck cars, plus CSX SD40-2 and GP38-2 for freight and the new Dura-Max rock hopper. The Deluxe version adds the colourful Tri-Rail GP49H-3. The Florida scenery is flatter than your average pub pool table, but it has all the requisite palm trees, canals and harbours you'd expect.
Airedale & Wharfedale Network is the UK route: a fifty-four-mile branching network across Yorkshire from Leeds and Bradford up to Skipton and Ilkley. You can drive the Northern BR Class 331, the LNER Class 801 Azuma, and the Class 66 with HYA limestone hoppers for the Rylstone quarry freight. The Northern BR Class 333 EMU is added with the Deluxe Edition, with a top service speed of 100 mph (160 km/h), and it's also one of the fastest accelerating EMUs operating in the UK.
Bahnstrecke Nürnberg – Würzburg covers over a hundred kilometres of Bavarian mainline with seven hundred and seventeen services — regional trains, S-Bahn, ICE, and freight all sharing the rails. The DB BR 440, BR 442, BR 401 ICE 1, and BR 193 Vectron are all included, and Deluxe adds the BR 412 ICE 4 for running at up to two hundred and sixty-five kilometres per hour. Always some of our favourites, this German route is particularly busy and immersive.
I believe I'm right in saying that just about every passenger service can now be played as driver or conductor, which won't appeal to everyone but puts a whole new slant on classic TSW gameplay.
The Xbox version runs well with quick resume and Xbox Play Anywhere, and the install is a reasonable 34.1 gigabytes without any extra DLC routes. Dovetail have pushed the draw distance out a bit, but it's still not great and level of detail 'pop' is a real eyesore, especially when autumnal coloured trees flick between orange, yellow and brown no more than 50 yards in front of the train. I'm not sure why draw distance and LoD are still such a visual issue because TSW no longer supports the "Gen 8" consoles (Xbox One & PlayStation 4), so being shackled by their performance should no longer be the problem.
TSW7 features a whole new set of collectibles and the largest number of scenarios yet. Our favourite, a fun one titled 'Then and Now' that sees you drive a BR 412 ICE alongside an older ICE 1 DB all the way from Neustadt to Nürnberg 24 miles (39km) away. Synchronising pace with the ICE 1 was a good challenge, and arriving at the same time very satisfying.
TSW7 sees another year pass, with another competent but uninspiring offering from Dovetail. The trains and rolling stock are still undoubtedly the stars of the show and the main focus, and some of the scenery (particularly on the Airedale & Wharfedale route) is quite pleasant, but despite using Unreal Engine 5 Train Sim World's narrow and not particularly long corridor of detail is being left behind visually by many open world games and other sims.
Regardless of our gripes (and we never mince our words when critiquing a game), what we have here is comfortably the best train sim on Xbox or PlayStation. We know Dovetail will work hard ironing out the game's minor issues, but after 7 editions should they be there at all?
Many thanks to Dovetail Games and Indigo Pearl