My Model Train

We're a pretty open-minded bunch here at Pocket Gamer. We don't judge others by their looks, their tastes or their pastimes. So we don't automatically assume that someone with grey hair is a slow driver, and we don't think that someone with a taste for florid jumpers is necessarily a golfer.

Likewise, we don't figure that someone with a passion for model trains is a social cripple. However, it's hard to maintain that perspective after having played My Model Train.

Not because it'll suck up hours of your time, confine you to the loft and give you a skin tone only slighter darker than milk, but because it's a puzzle game that's as fundamentally flawed as calling somebody wearing glasses a geek.

It's also a little misleading. When we first heard of My Model Train, we were expecting a Hornby-esque model train sim where you could lay tracks, put down stations, pick carriages and generally play God on a miniature scale.

Instead, what you're presented with is a puzzle game that could – really – be based on any one of a dozen gimmicks. That it's a puzzle surrounding a model train is neither hear nor there, it'd suffer from the same problems if it were based on wiring a computer, plumbing a house or planning a football set-piece.

What you're required to do is direct a train around a track to meet certain objectives. These include travelling via specific routes, picking up passengers from pre-determined stations, collecting water, and avoiding other trains.

This is done by switching the numerous junctions, signals and stations on the track so that the train – which carries on rolling – goes where you want it. Some junctions enable you to turn left only, others right only, and more still any one of three possible destinations. The challenge – the intentional one, at least – lies in the fact that you have to time the junction changes to catch the train and figure out the spaghetti-like layout of the line.

The unintentional boost to the difficulty level comes courtesy of two elements: the controls, and the fact that you can't see enough of the landscape in which the railway is set.

Addressing the second of the problematic pair first, the fact that you can't see vast sections of track when you start means you run a real risk of losing your locomotive – it's going to run on the track and head off regardless of whether you want it to or not, it's progress arrested only by a junction that's not been switched to allow it to proceed.

Due to this, it's imperative that you get the junctions switched precisely and reliably. You do this by moving the highlight square over the section of track where the junction is and then pressing '5' or OK. The direction that the junction operates in then cycles through the options available to you, indicated by arrows.

It sounds straightforward but the highlight square moves sluggishly and isn't precise enough to keep up with the demands you'll place on it. The isometric viewpoint doesn't help matters, either, as it's never intuitive as to whether you need to press up on your handset's directional pad or right to move to the square you want.

These two bugbears combine to spoil most of the fun that My Model Train would have otherwise provided. They're frustrating and hamper your interaction with the very part of the game that you need to be able to rely on.

What results is a puzzle game that, while initially appearing novel, turns out to be un-enjoyable and only does more harm to the social status of model train lovers the nation over.