Take control
Traffic Giant is another fairly standard entry in the transport based business sim genre, as best typified by the likes of Transport Tycoon or Railroad Tycoon. It's certainly not a bad game and if you are a fan of such things, then it's definitely worth a look, but there's just not much here that's different to other games to make it really stand out from the crowd. The setup is very similar to other titles, and you're given the task of taking a small village and building up its transport infrastructure, helping it to develop into a thriving metropolis. There are only three main forms of transport to deal with here, trains, trams and buses, but you do have a number of competitors who are going to make your life difficult. The gameworld is populated by towns and cities of up to 40000 individual citizens, who each go about their own busy little lives and whose needs for goods and travel you have to satisfy. That's pretty much it for the game, and although it's quite fun to start with, a number of issues prevent it from being as good as it should have been. The first is the interface, which is needlessly awkward, requiring multiple mouse clicks where it seems like one or two would have worked better. The game also lacks the sense of fun of the best of the genre, making the player feel more like a pencil pushing civil servant than an onmipotent travel god. In its favor, the game does feature some nice visuals, which are very atmospheric with a high level of detail, and the gameplay is certainly compelling once you get past the clumsy interface. However, it lacks that something special to make it a must play.
