Be Excellent To Each Other

Tropico 4 Demo out now, chaps! It's 1.8gb and super-fast to download through Steam. The full game will be coming out on the 1st September and I for one am looking forward to it. Especially since being a tropical dictator you can rule with an iron fist and thus brutally execute those who displease you. Litterers, take note.

The somewhat sparse forum is here:

http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=49

And the main website is here:

http://www.tropico3.com/en/index.php

I for one very much enjoyed Tropico 3 though I skipped Absolute Power, the expansion pack. There has been some criticism that this looks like more of the same, but there does seem to be some really nice improvements and it does look a little souped up. Also, the islands get to be five times bigger, there's natural disasters properly this time, hireable council members and twenty new buildings. Downloading the demo now, shall let you know what I think!

Explain to me why I should buy this when I already have Civ5? I've never played Tropico game before.

Essentially Tropico is a banana republic simulator. Rather than rule a country you rule your own little island with a city and occassional outlying districts. It runs in real time with 3D gubbins, rather like a more zoomed in, more detailed Sim City 4. You kick off with a palace and construction yard and a few starter buildings and go from there. Depending on the mission or your whim you might want to become an ecologically devestating industrial powerhouse, or a tourist resort, or a tax haven, or an agricultural land exporting rum and cigars, or a mixture. You also choose which political streak you want, from Capitalists and Communists through to a religious mania or a nationalistic personality cult. You can either opt for a juggling act to keep your people happy or brutally crack down on dissenters with assassinations, detention centres and bribery. Choices are also to go either democratic, rigged elections or balls out totalitarianism. Complicating your options are foreign powers, including the Super Powers, who have conflicting views on which path you take. Fail to safeguard against an insulted superpower, and you might have a blockade with gunboats off shore. Or worse yet, a fleet turning up to invade!

Tropico is smaller scale than Civ, but has more humour. There are lots of mini-quests in game, frequently with wry, satirical goals. You can never tell if something is actually going to backfire when it comes to being presented with a quest choice, but it always offers you a way to make good a mistake. Eventually your little settlement will become a bustling city. Educated or idiot masses? Free or repressed? Mass corruption or squeaky clean? There are 20 missions in all, a sandbox mode and an option to create and share your own scenarios. Sandbox, curiously, is never as fulfilling as the actual missions.

Other than keeping the people quiet (one way or another), success is measured in how much you can line your own pockets and skim off various funds. You can enact edicts that improve your people's lot, or you can equally impose a tax on building that goes straight to your pockets.

Best of all with Tropico is the atmosphere, with it really feeling like you're running your own island. There are niggles I have with it, such as it clearly favouring a Light-Side dictator/President rather than a Dark Side, but other than that it is one of the best light strategy games around. Civilization meets Sim City if you will.

Sounds fun I'll give the demo a go.

Wheee! Downloaded, off to play it now!

To add to Pete's excellent summary: The music is traditionally excellent. The original had the best, but I'd imagine this will still hold up.

Colour me intrigued, I'm off to get the demo now.

Excluding the lovely sense of character, my favourite thing about Tropico is the way your island grows just like a real city - by necessity and convenience, with only a vague hint of deliberate design and forward planning. You'll stick down a mine on a hill miles away early on, and then build a shack for the miners to live in. Later a clinic will pop up, and a marketplace, and you'll need homes for the workers there, too. Before long, 20 years have passed, and the tiny mining neighbourhood in a corner has gradually morphed into the bustling commercial town centre of your entire island.

I've never been good at raking in the money quickly though, so I've never really expanded across a whole island.

Whelp, finished the demo and here are my thoughts:

At first glance it's disappointingly like Tropico 3. Most of the buildings are carried over for heaven's sake, with nary a face-lift. The mechanics work pretty much exactly the same, but the controls have been streamlined a bit. Protect yourself against rebels, fulfil the people's needs, build up a healthy economy and skim as much money as you can. Same as usual.

However!

There's quite a lot new here that's pretty fun. My favourite addition are the new personalities in game. There's lots of characters who pop up, most of them thinly veiled satirical swipes at Richard Nixon, Yasser Arafat and the like. Some of the humour's amusingly cynical, as the American's order you to pay a 'freedom tax' so they'll add you to their 'least likely to invade' list. The voice acting is pretty good, I especially like the English toff character representing the EU. "Riff-raff on ma back again, don'tcha know." Then there's your advisors. They swing between Sim City style advice and setting you challenges and there's about eight of these council advisors and generals in all. They help keep the flow of the game dynamic and make it seem more like you're in charge of a living entity. Interestingly, you can't unlock most edicts now until you've hired the respective ministers. For instance I couldn't turn my cabaret club into a sercret police agency ready to kill the faction leaders until I hired the Minister of Interior. Seemed amusingly rum to send a Playboy Bunny to kill an old Communist woman with a zimmer frame.

There's new resources to exploit, though that's not much of a game changer. There are also criminal Tropicans too. The islands seem bigger and there's some nice new features. You can 'Quick Complete' buildings by paying extra brass. There's more building upgrades. Your avatar has traits they can build from mission to mission. There's a lot more dialogue and yes, new music alongside the old. One natural disaster showed itself - as if knowing I was playing it, a tornado appeared. It was a curious beast, able to lift up trucks but still failing to demolish some flimsy structures and instead pummelling others. I expect they were trying to replicate the tornado's unpredictable damage spread regarding its multiple vortices and downdraft potential, but the trucks indicated an F4 to F5 whilst the structure damage and toll of ten said more of a very strong urban centre F2 to middle F3 for me. So 3/5 for the admittedly well animated tornado there. (Neatly, ruined buildings can be rebuilt easily with a click for a fee, saving on tedious demolishing and then trying to remember what was once there.) In the full game you get tornadoes, earthquakes, locusts and somewhat controversially tidal waves too.

The graphics are slightly improved over Tropico 3 with more detailed models and a few more effects. Only a little though. It looks very nice, not jaw-dropping though. But then again, it is a strategy game. You can zoom out further too, which is nice.

Quibbles:

Sometimes new event dialogues or pop up boxes would nonsensically appear over existing ones. For example my minister of interior started asking about a newspaper building in the middle of the tornado disaster, and I got a lecture on schools whilst putting down a rebellion.

There don't seem to be much in the way of additional avatar clothing customisation above Tropico 3. Maybe it's just the demo and there's more in game. Once again there's far fewer options for the female avatar than the male, sort it out guys. Also some of the written notes indicate a male El Presidente when the female is selected.

The Environmental minister keeps blithering about trees. They're a pain to place - practically individually planted and you have to rotate them constantly to make it all look natural. A Sim City style paint-brush planting style would be better.

It could do with explaining export storage and over-employment a bit better, never got the hang of that.

The Golden Hour doesn't seem quite as nice or as long as in Tropico 3, funnily enough.

Other than that it looks like an ace game. If you've played Tropico 3 recently then I hesitate to recommend this, but if it's been a while and especially if you missed Absolute Power, it looks like a very tempting buy. If you haven't played a Tropico game from 3 onwards, I say go get!

Thanks for the notes, pete. I've been unsure of this one for a while.

How influential are the diplomatic expansions? I read hints about more foreign powers and more possibilities, but no details. Is it window dressing?

Hrrrm. It's SORT of window dressing. I'm not sure. The EU, China and Middle East might add more in the full game but they just seem to be about odd events and the occassional embargo or aid package. They usually ask for money (with a humorous explanation) but you do get to import and export things to them, I think. (Didn't do much of that.) Superpowers interfere with events more and have more personality with different spokesmen. As far as I can see the options haven't increased, only the current interaction has broadened.

Forgot to say: The edicts frequently have visual effects - I like the fireworks for Tropico Day.
It runs a lot smoother and the traffic no longer gets snarled and the people seem to find their way around a lot faster and easier. Looks like there's been a lot of under the hood tweaks.

About bloody time. They really messed up by not doing this even by the third game. Calling for a Mardi Gras that has absolutely no visible effect on the town is always saddening.

But still, a welcome upgrade.

I ... I think I'll wait for reviews on this one, maybe a sale grab. I like Tropico, but I also like not wasting money. Ta for the info.

I think I'll get it as I do like the series a lot, but if they release an expansion pack in six months I'll be pissed off. Any next Tropico game has to be radically different now.

Whilst I havent yet played Tropico 4 (which after reading Pete's review I doubt I will bother) if you havent played Tropico 3, you can now get the gold edition on steam for only £6.79! I think this would be a much safer buy, especially if you are undecided that you will like it or not.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/23490/

WoW has pissed me off right up the cunt this evening, stupid fucking random fucking idiots.

Time to try this demo out, is there an option to SLAUGHTER EVERYONE?

That would be good.

There probably is. Would take a lot of clicking though as you can only order one person assassinated at a time. Not sure how visual it is in the demo either.

Note everyone, this is the demo. I'll wing a full review of the full game to let you know of the main improvements and whether it's worth buying pronto, waiting for the sale or ignoring altogether.

About to hit L50 on my hunter today Still thoroughly enjoying the revamped zones!

Had a play of the Tropico 4 demo and just wasn't in the mood, I don't think. Got bored halfway through the tutorial...
I'll give it another go at some point

The tutorial's aren't that exciting at all. The main demo mission is fun though, and keeps throwing things at you, which is nice.

Forgot to say, Doc G. and Kalmar will very much appreciate that there's two digs at homeopathy in the game. "El Presidente! The medical care on this island is appalling. Tropicans are turning to ridiculous supersitions such as voodoo and homeopathy to treat their needs. Build clinics and hire Doctors now!" Or something.

The demo didn't exactly rock my world. It looks somewhat primitive, even with everything maxed out, and they seem to have put more thought into the 360 pad controls (hiss spit) than the keyboard and mouse controls.

Great humour and lovely music, but still seemed a bit too much like a Sim City from ten years ago really.

I'll try it again over the weekend as I've been in odd moods recently and apt to jump to the wrong conclusions about things.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... o-4-review

On the plus side, I've never played 3, so will now pick it up from Steam for pennies at some point.

*Rubs chin.* I worried as much, but I'm still tempted. Way bigger islands and a few nice new features makes it tempting, plus there's not much else out there at the moment that I'm interested in. Hrrm. Wish they had tried to invent something new though.

Same game again, but still bloody brilliant. I wish they would address the transport network though. My roads constantly clog up.