I can't help thinking that this is what Thomas the Tank Engine fans have been waiting for ever since Dovetail Games announced that they'd successfully obtained the licence and Thomas made a couple of guest appearances in TSW (Train Sim World.) They've now supplied us with a substantial part of the island of Sodor in which to operate Thomas and several other of Reverend W. Awdry's most well-known engines.
A series of Story missions and scenarios is the main meat of the game, but each engine (Thomas, Gordon, Percy, Diesel, Emily plus James if you have the 'Deluxe' Edition) has their own substantial timetable schedule too. Getting into the story I immediately managed to fail several times and was disappointed that the game has no save function, although some scenarios do have checkpoints. Amazingly not all of these are helpful as the game can ‘save’ a checkpoint where you're just about to sail through a stop signal!
I have no idea why, but you cannot skip cut scenes either, whether it's the first time you viewed it or the hundredth. While I understand that developers are often proud of their cut scenes and backstory, and they undoubtedly set up the scenarios nicely, some of these are quite long and no fun to watch for the 2nd, 3rd or 20th time–especially if you're an impatient younger gamer with the attention span of a gnat, or a grumpy old git like me...
Oddly, you seem to get less tutelage than in Train Sim World, which, even given the same simplified control system that Thomas & Friends were given in TSW6, seems nonsensical.
They've also removed the inclinometer (slope gauge), which means that, although there are a couple of quite steep hills on Sodor, engines will slow down sometimes for no apparent reason (unless you can detect slopes or have a spirit level on you.) As the slopes affect the stopping distances so much (particularly when hurtling along with Gordon or James) this seems a really daft thing to omit, given that the game has TSW's realistic physics and stopping distances. The standard TSW accelerometer is also omitted, which is less missed but still a strange thing to leave out. You also have to hold the engine's throttles open or they gradually slow down to a stop–again an odd control choice in my opinion, as this means kids' small hands will sometimes have to hold the right trigger (which has a surprisingly strong spring) in for long periods.
My pet hate, the rainbow-coloured stop marker still stays on even if you turn it off in the options. Maybe Dovetail will make this needless, intrusive feature permanently turn-offable one day.
The Sodor railways can be a bit quiet, but during one of Percy's story missions (Percy's Troublesome Day, Part One) you'll see Gordon leaving Knapford station while James is sat in the station, and as Percy leaves, Emily arrives. Then, further down the line, you see Thomas, Annie and Clarabel coming the other way–It's absolutley brilliant stuff!
Apart from Sir Topham Hatt (who before the world went mad and we started worrying about calling a spade a spade in case it hurt shovels’ feelings, was simply known as 'The Fat Controller') all of the character models are the limited, slightly weird ones from TSW, which is disappointing, although they do dress in clothes of what looks like the correct era (1940s-ish). They seem to behave relatively realistically, and some stations look quite busy. This is much better than at launch, when you'd rarely see them get on or off a train, although I have seen 3 coaches full of passengers sitting forlornly in a siding–but maybe Diesel shunted them there as a prank? Maybe it's just me, but the animals (apart from the sheep, which look baaaad) look better than the same, tired old set of passenger models that date back to TSW2.
As for road vehicles, apart from Bertie the bus in a cutscene and at the start of a race with Thomas, and a post van in another cutscene, there don't appear to be any cars, vans, tractors or buses moving around the map either, despite being plentiful as static models and Sodor having more level crossings than any TSW route I can recall.
As with TSW, the locomotives and rolling stock are the stars with their superbly animated faces, but the detail reduces quite quickly the further you get from the rails. The Sodor scenery is more than adequate though, and while out sightseeing you'll find the iconic multi-engine Tidmouth sheds at Vicarstown, the WW2 airfield at Dryaw, a familiar bridge or two and and wind and water mills that featured in the title sequence of the classic Britt Allcroft TV series.
Dovetail have cured TSW's age-old 'camera clipping outside tunnels' problem by making the view snap back to the cab view as soon as you enter a tunnel–which they first wisely used on the Bakerloo Line. Unfortunately this just highlights another graphical problem that they haven't fixed–steam/smoke from the engines' stack clipping into the cab. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't cause so much flashing, which of course can be dangerous to some gamers. This is exacerbated by the fact that it gets very dark in tunnels–fortunately I found a lantern in Thomas' cab (and all the other engines too) that the game didn't tell me about.
Extra little missions include Shunting Challenges, in which you have to rearrange trucks into numerical order. I found that 'Kicking' (loose, uncoupled shunting) or 'Humping' trucks worked really well in these scenarios, and had a lot of fun with them. More shunting (‘switching’ in the US) in TSW6 please!
We encountered a few issues including difficult to select couplings (a real pain in the buffers during shunting) and another one that, going by the Dovetail, Reddit and Steam Forums, seems to randomly affect all formats, where the left stick (movement) gets locked in position because this makes coupling & uncoupling & leaving the cab as a driver impossible! We couldn't help but notice less critical but just as shoddy bugs in the form of the narrator's text leaking outside of a caption, the usual typos including various attempts at ‘Ffarquhar’, a really troublesome one in the title of a scenario… Oh, and you can also fall through Gordon’s cab floor during one story chapter... What a silly old driver! At the time of writing some of these have been fixed, some not.
I'd also like to point out that there is still no free roaming mode. If you do try to explore and spawn a train to have a free run with, you'll get “Stop & Wait” (forever) red signals every 100 yards or less. It's intensely annoying, and I cannot believe that in this game of all of their train games, Dovetail haven't given us a proper free roaming mode, with no other AI trains to worry about and no stop signals.
Apart from the simplified control system, Dovetail have made few allowances for younger gamers, or n00bs for that matter. With no mid-mission save a SPAD (Signal Passed At Danger) or derailment is a total fail, meaning restarting the service or scenario from the start. Some missions can be failed for a SPAD even when you didn't actually pass a stop signal, which makes the game feel overly strict. Wouldn't an admonishment from Fatso Topham Hatt for overshooting the station or stop point and being ordered to reverse back to the correct stop be better, be more educational, and even more realistic?
The game is narrated by Mark Moraghan, who does an admirable job of vocalising the various characters, very much in the style of Ringo Starr and Michael Angelis, who voiced the classic TV series. When you've completed the story mode (which includes some familiar tales from the classic Railway Stories) there are collectable whistles, hats, paintings & Railway Stories books to find as you explore Sodor. This game has plenty to do but also leaves plenty of room for future DLC featuring Edward, Henry, Toby, Duck and a few others…
As usual I don't mince my words and if this review sounds negative, then I must say Wonders of Sodor is excellent, and at times made me want to ‘toot toot’ with delight. It is without doubt a real must-have for fans of the series–Dovetail just needs to iron out a few issues to improve the player's overall experience, and given their past record, I'm sure they will.
Many thanks to Dovetail Games & Indigo Pearl