Tuesday, June 4, 2013

[PC] Tropico 4 Review



Tropico 4 is an “island-building simulator”, as I would like to call it, developed by Hemimont Games. In Tropico, you play as “El Presidente” as you control an island in the Caribbean Sea during the Cold War. Tropico 4 features a memorable soundtrack, addicting gameplay that might persuade you that you are really “El Presidente” when you are finished, and yes, achievements.

            As soon as you start the game, you are welcomed by what seems to be a Caribbean style of music that creates a blend of an acoustic guitar and bass levels that just says, “Damn, this is great already”.
  
            When you’re asked to play, you get to come to a screen that asks you what you want your “El Presidente” to look like and what he or she is like. I myself chose the pirate-looking mate who was installed by the KBG and praises the USSR like it’s his actual mother. You can also choose traits on how your people or other countries see you. You could become an ugly, alcoholic, gambler, but hey, those people need love too.   

            There are 20 missions in the Tropico 4 campaign that spread out onto 20 different islands. Most of the missions are intense as they test your management skills. Some missions you cannot build certain buildings or farms because your advisor lost the blueprints. It seems like as you progress, you’re asked to deal with one simple task that might take you at least an hour to complete. Then there are tasks that seem more like a tutorial, like building your island full of tourist attractions or a stable mining island.

            As you proceed to build your island, feed your people, and possibly commit Communism, your people are bound to get unhappy. Maybe rebels are attacking and you have no army at all, or you have no religious buildings and your people are calling you a heretic. Tropico 4 kinda throws it all at you pretty fast. First, you need to start a steady income of exports, which is usually a farm or mine, then you just build away to suit either your needs or your population’s needs. Sometimes you’ll see the Reverend asking you to build a church or the religious nerds won’t vote for you in the upcoming election and you’ll lose the mission. Perhaps the tree-hugging lady doesn’t like you to have logging stations, cutting down their precious trees. More importantly, the way these situations are thrown at you, you feel obligated to do them or you have a huge risk of losing the mission via being thrown out of office. 

Your island and the HUD
Becoming top dog of your island isn’t quite easy. You have many factions to deal with, such as the Capitalists, the Communists, the Intellectuals, the Religious, the Militarists, the Environmentalists, the Nationalists, and the Loyalists. Of course, you can’t please them all, so you’re always busy with what faction you want to support you the most. If the Militarists don’t think the size of your army is suitable, they could cause protests or even join the rebel forces. 

            A fun feature I noticed that seemed to be more of a mid-game or a late-game action, are edicts. Edicts act as a purchasable perk for your people or your island. You can raise the rate of education across your island, train the poor into your army, praise the USSR and protect yourself from any US dogs coming to attack your island if your US relationship plummets. 

A fully functional island.


             Besides the Campaign mode, there is a tutorial, extra missions, which is like DLC, challenges, and a Sandbox mode. In Sandbox mode, you can create your own island if you’d like, customizing how large you want it, the amount of resources the island contains, and the elevation. However, in between everything, there are loading screens that consist of quotes from people you have likely never heard of before, albeit pretty neat, as most of them seem political, and you are pretty much supposed to become this badass “El Presidente”, so why not? Also in Sandbox mode is the option of turning rebels off, no immigrants, or keep the pesky tourists out. There’s also a God Mode option that turns everything negative off and gives you $500.000 for free, but also disables achievements. Speaking of achievements, there are 50 achievements for you to unlock through your course as an island-owner.  

Overall, Tropico 4 is just a Caribbean political island-building simulator. It’s highly fun as it creates many opportunities to mess around with what you want to become like with the character creator, political stance, national stance, and the Sandbox mode, which adds to the replay value. There are some problems with the game of course, such as sometimes the cursor goes too far when I’m trying to find a certain building and that there’s no option to change mouse sensitivity in-game. I wish there was a windowed-screen option in the options, but sadly there isn’t. There is Social Media connectivity though, so you can tell all your friends that you’re playing some awesome game that they have never heard of before and brag about all of your achievements via Facebook or Twitter. Some more issues are that the game really does seem it like it throws a lot at you if you don’t build stuff right away. You’ll probably be pestered to death all game long by the Reverend to build that church or cathedral, and you’ll end up feeling bad about it, so it’s either waste $20,000 on a cathedral or lose the game as the pesky Religious faction refuses to vote for you, or they just become rebels. It’s the same for the other factions as well.

 If I had to score Tropico 4, I’d say it deserves an 8/10. Some option issues and tedious decision making shouldn’t stop you from playing the addicting Fidel Castro Simulator 4. Just kidding with that last part.  

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