Publisher(s): Kalypso Media
Platform(s):
Xbox 360, PC
Review Platform: Xbox 360
Release Date: Novermber 13, 2012
In a market saturated with
FPS quadruples and copycat cover shooters, Tropico 4 is a welcome novelty. It’s
a management and construction simulation that has you govern beautiful tropical
islands from the comfort of your couch…a rather rare experience for Xbox 360
gamers. Kalypso has done an extraordinary job of giving console gamers a unique
gaming venture that’s typically reserved for the PC. The Gold Edition comes
with Tropico 4 as well as the fantastic Modern
Times expansion giving players hundreds of hours of deep, complex, and remarkably
immersive gameplay. Playing through Tropico is absolutely captivating and
gamers with even the slightest interest in strategy should give this title
their undivided attention.
- Unlimited replayability
- A great sense of humor
- Deep and complex, yet never overwhelming, gameplay
- Near flawless transition from KB/Mouse to gamepad
- Stellar visuals
- Steep learning curve
- Occasional frame rate stutters
- Camera can be annoying
You play as El Presidente as you work towards
reestablishing power after averting a nuclear war. Placed on the communist side
of the Cold War, it’s up to you to lead your people to either democratic
prosperity and tie the knot with the western world, or rule with military might
as a feared dictator. The main plot is comprised of three acts: Rise To Power, The Revenge, and The Comeback. Don’t mind the politically
skewed premise, Tropico is a historical parody that embraces the ridiculous. The
game’s humor is unprecedented. In a way, it reminds me of Sacha Baron Cohen’s
Dictator, but with a little more sanity.
You’re presented with four ways
to play the game. There’s the original Tropico 4 campaign that consist of 20
massive challenges, the more recent Modern
Times expansion that kicks up the difficulty and adds an additional 12 missions,
the glorious sandbox mode, and Challenges,
which allows players to exchange custom made missions. But before tackling any
of the maps, it’s crucial that you visit the tutorial mode. Here you’re tasked
with smaller responsibilities that teach you the basics of agriculture, healthcare,
military, and politics. With only a few shacks scattered across a massive
island rich in various resources, it’s important to learn to set your
priorities. It might seem overwhelming at first as the game thrusts large
amounts of information from the get go, but once you learn which basic needs
have to be fulfilled first, it becomes significantly easier to handle the
constant flow of incoming assignments.
Each chapter focuses on one predominant
goal with several side-tasks popping up as you play along. Some challenges have
you exporting precious resources to foreign countries, while others have you
build the ultimate tourist resort. It’s up to you how many of the side missions
you want to complete, but every successful outcome increases your score and
grants you greater rewards, so it never feels like random busywork.
It can take hours, days,
heck maybe even weeks, before you’re able to construct large, prosperous
cities. Much depends on your play style. A more democratic approach that
encourages elections, balances the economy, and preserves the environmental
quality takes more time, but is considerably more rewarding. Foreign aid can
oftentimes pull your island out of a financial crisis, but keeping foreign
relations intact is no easy task. Then of course there are gamers that prefer
the more sadistic approach to dictatorship. Instead of meeting protestors’
demands, you might send the military to clear the streets and even kill off a
few citizens to send a message. This route might give you faster temporary
results, but will make your leadership crumble in the long run. Oftentimes,
balance is a must in order to establish a strong island economy. You can’t
always rule with pure benevolence, nor can you continually ignore the nation’s
needs. It’s a bittersweet portrayal of politics, particularly when you’re
forced to make sacrifices for the greater good.
Keeping an eye on your
almanac is the best way to keep things harmonious. The almanac is your best
friend in Tropico 4 as it gives you a stat overview of everything that’s taking
place on the island. You can monitor peoples’ happiness, the factions’ demands,
as well as your political standing with foreign countries. It’s cleanly laid
out, easy to navigate, and incredibly useful, making all the micromanaging really
fun.
This is not a game that you
can play for a few minutes here and there, nor is it recommended for occasional
gamers. It requires critical thinking and a good chunk of time in order to make
any progress, but it never feels cheap or unfair. Tropico truly shines in that its
visuals provide as much information and aid as all the numbers and percentages.
You see everything that happens on
your island, which helps the immersion as well as the understanding of
unfolding events. When there’s a riot, you witness
citizens swarming the streets and hear the
gunshots as small protests slowly turn into chaos. Seeing which buildings are
at what stages of construction helps you set architectural priorities for
faster results, and if you have enough cash, you can even quick-assemble
buildings with a click of a button. It’s all the little visual clues that make
Tropico such an engaging experience, unlike many other strategy games that rely
too much on dense chunks of text.
The feeling of progression
in Tropico 4 is unparalleled. You’ll go from a struggling leader that can
barely feed his people to an industry giant exporting jewelry and reaping the
profits of tourism. Seeing a poverty stricken village transform into a
skyscraper filled metropolis is extremely satisfying. There’s a great sense of cause
and effect as you shape your nation with each difficult decision. When
something does go wrong, you’ll know
exactly where you faltered so that you won’t repeat the same mistake. But even
when everything runs in sync, natural disasters can easily ruin your flow of
success. A devastating tornado can put a huge dent in your wallet as you try to
restore damaged property and the devious droughts can quickly ruin your crops.
It’s this unpredictability that puts your leadership skills to the test and
learning to deal with such disasters can determine the success of your city.
Running your island with the
gamepad is a breeze. Every action can be accessed quickly and easily via simple
to use menus and the button layout is absolutely perfect. My only gripe is with
the zoom in/zoom out function of the camera. To zoom in you have to pull the
analog stick back and pushing forward zooms the camera out. It feels unnatural
and there’s no way to change it in the options menu. But other than that,
Tropico 4 is a perfect example of how to port a PC game to consoles.
Visually, the game looks
beautiful, especially considering the scale of the island and the microscopic
details throughout each city. You can zoom in all the way down to the street
level and even see the people’s faces…it’s quite impressive. You can observe
everything that’s taking place on the island, from the construction workers
arriving to the site and taking lunch breaks to the farmers working in the
fields and gathering food for their families. Tropico 4 feels alive, looks
stunning, and sounds hilarious. A rather uplifting soundtrack serves as a
perfect backdrop as you loose days and weeks managing your city, and the
various voice actors that deliver the chapter challenges provide a perfect
comedic tone.
| Final Score | “The Best City Simulation Ever Made” | 9.0 |
| Graphics |
The game looks stunning, especially once your city grows into a prosperous metropolis. The attention to detail is astounding and there are only minor frame rate hiccups that interrupt the otherwise superb graphics.
|
8.5 |
| Gameplay |
A perfect example of how to port a PC game to consoles. After spending countless hours with the Xbox 360 version, I actually can't see myself returning to the KB/Mouse controls…there's just something about running an island from the comfort of your couch.
|
9.0 |
| Value |
You can play this game for years and never run out of things to do. Tropico 4 Gold Edition is not only an incredible value, but it's one of the best city/management games ever made.
|
10 |
| Sound |
The voice acting is hilarious and the music is catchy, although it can become repetitive and slightly annoying after the hundredth hour mark.
|
8.0 |
Review by Tin Salamunic
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Tin Salamunic is the founder of The Game Scouts. He is a Video Game
Journalist during the day and illustrator by night. He's been obsessed with
video games since the early NES days, collecting every major system and game on
the market. Video games are the reason he pursued the illustration career and
he hopes to be creative director for a video game company one day. All Artciles by Tin.
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