Iiiii totally cannot get a handle on A-Train 9. I guess it's more a train management game than a city builder, which is fine, but I can't get a feel for what I should be doing with that. Don't see much difference in the trains (there's like, minute differences in the number of passengers they can carry and their speeds and prices), but I don't see how this translates into operating cost. Doesn't feel like there's much room to experiment with establishing transit networks either -- you have buses and trains, and I don't think things like pedestrian/individual vehicle traffic are modeled, and weather doesn't appear to affect transit time.
Unrelated to A-Train, because it actually does do this, but I think the thing that annoys me most about city builders is when it doesn't matter where buildings are located, as long as their present. SimCity models traffic and area of coverage; the Caesar/Pharaoh/etc games model this in terms of... how well/often civs and maintenance guys can access/pass by certain structures; Afterlife has various rules for transit time between soul housing sites and punishments/rewards.
On the other hand, Stronghold (SSI) doesn't really concern itself with where you put what, as long as mines are in hilly provinces and farms are by water. Fragile Allegiance, in terms of building stuff on your asteroids, doesn't either. Nominally these two were more of an RTS and 4X than city builders proper, and in FA's case you could argue that the building placement stuff is just a slightly less abstract form of what you get for colony management in a 4X game, and it's really fine in that sense, but... I don't know, I guess this applies to RTSes too -- I'vep layed way too many where it doesn't really matter where you put stuff. Resource units move between extraction points and stockpiles really fast for the most part, and there's not usually a lot of concern about getting raw materials to building sites.
That's why I liked Outpost 2 and Knights and Merchants so much, though -- there's a huge emphasis on logistics.
I wonder if SimIsle modeled anything wrt distance from resource extraction facilities and factories. I'm thinking you paid more for hauling stuff around, and possibly had more air polution.
Dark Souls - I have butterfly problems. Namely I don't like waiting on bosses to go vulnerable because I am very impatient.
How is Dead Space? Gamersgate has it cheap for the rest of the night.