by I Commentator I

© 2010 Declan S

City building and management games have always been more prominently played on the PC as opposed to consoles, as the speed and intricate controls often have made it hard to play such a game without the accuracy of a mouse.

Tropico 3, developed by Kalypso Media and released on both the PC (Sept 09) and the Xbox 360 (moved from Oct 09 to 1st Qtr 2010), is set to fix that void. An easy build interface, forgiving controls and most importantly the ability to pause time and set building construction all make this game possible to be enjoyed by both console and PC gamers alike.

Straight off the bat – Tropico 3 is a great looking game. In all campaigns and scenarios you are given a large, near unpopulated island as your playground. The environment looks great and ready for the construction teams to come in and tear it down.

You can zoom right out and look at your ever growing island as a whole or you can zoom right in and look at every individual citizen you have. Overall, the game right from the get go is very well presented, although when zoomed in the resolution doesn’t keep up as well as hoped.

The landscape and Setting

In terms of gameplay, Tropico 3 is set from anywhere in the 1950’s through to the year 2000. Tropico 3 places you as the new leader of a banana republic, and it’s your job to run it as best you can.

The game offers both a 15 level campaign, which lasts anywhere from 15-30 hours, as well as sandbox and other challenge modes.

Overall there is a lot of longevity in this game, although it does get very repetitive at times. It is a good idea to start off with the campaigns first, as they all revolve around a specific game area, which help you become acquainted with Tropico better.

Many who dive straight into a sandbox game may have a lot of trouble, as the campaigns teach you to deal with certain situations, almost like an extended tutorial, and by the end of the campaign you will be city building like the best of them.

For any of the challenges or campaigns in the game you can create your own ‘avatar’, allowing you to choose how you made it into power and how you intend to run your nation. For example, you can choose to have gained power through a communist revolution, with a background in development and religious tendencies.

This sort of option will raise respect among the Communist factions within your island, give you discounts on buildings and give the people high expectations of democratic elections. If you gained power through military coup however, your subjects may not be as optimistic.

There’s a definite need for ‘balance’

At its heart Tropico revolves around keeping the factions of the island happy by creating a balanced regime that satisfies all people. For example the capitalist faction may want a strong economy, the intellectual faction a good schooling system, or the militarist faction may want a strong army.

The real fun in this game revolves around trying to keep all these factions happy at once. As well as this both the USA and the USSR play a big part in Tropico 3, as keeping each country happy will result in them giving you monetary aid and the possibility of alliances and business deals, whilst angering them will result in battleships surrounding your island and threatening to invade.

All of these problems on your island are commentated on by DJ Juanito, who will voice the opinions of every day citizens in a humourous fashion.

I could rattle off all the intricate features of Tropico 3: like the ability to have individual characters and faction leaders assassinated by secret police (or if that isn’t your cup of tea, having them labeled as a heretic and having them dealt with by the religious faction of the island), or the many different types of economies or regimes you can create, but there is simply too much to go into detail on.

Ahh, but there are some negatives…

However this game does come with its negatives as well. Firstly the game offers little direction to new players in general. Apart from an initial short tutorial, new players are thrown in to the deep end. Simply going through the campaign levels is an easy way to combat this but it is never even suggested.

At other times some things are not explained in enough detail – for example you are told that food farms will feed the people, yet the game fails to mention how many farms you will need per level of population, nor the fact that your citizens won’t actually walk to the farms to collect the food unless you build markets.

These problems could have been easily fixed by a small written tutorial in the options or something of that fashion.

As well as this, the game seems to move very slowly at times. After my third or fourth campaign, I would simply turn the 3x speed on for every campaign, as the game just moves too slowly otherwise.

As well as this, many campaigns drag on far too long. For example one campaign offers the challenge: “survive for 40 years in office”. After no more than 25 years my island was self sufficient, all factions where happy and I simply had to leave the controller on waiting for the challenge to be over.

This did cause a large amount of frustration; luckily there were not so many of these challenges in the game.

For all its flaws, Tropico 3 is still definitely one of the better city building games on any console. However at the same time patience is a requirement to enjoy this game.

[ED: I'm a lover of FPS and TPS and Racing or Air sims, but for some reason I "WANT " this game. Something about it appeals to me. Creating my own thriving metropolis seeing it grow, or not as the case may be, and having the ability to see it happening at all levels is different to most 360 gaming experiences. I think this has just been added to my "Must Have List" - bugger, another game to play - and pay!]

© 2010 Declan S

“8/10

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