Pop Tops Tropico is a terrific game,
probably my favorite game of this spring. Its smart, its funny, its
deep, and it forces you to make tough decisions on both pragmatic and ethical levels that
often result in unexpected consequences. This all sort of took me by surprise. Since
Tropico was billed as a sim game in which you ruled over your own tropical island
dictatorship, I feared it might be either a bland Sim City goes Carribean game
or one that rewarded you for ruling with an unequivocally iron fist. Its neither of
those. While many of the games features and concepts will be familiar to fans
of the Sim series, PopTop has developed the tropical dictatorship setting with
such specificity and with so many unique features that it doesnt play quite like any
other game to date. And its not like you can just start shooting people in the
streets and throwing everyone in jail. Well, you can, but there are serious consequences
for these kinds of actions and youll probably end up ruling a terrible little Papa
Doc-esque craphole island.
Tropicos general thesis is that its harder to be a dictator than you
think. Really. This is partly because in Tropico you oversee all of your islands
economic and social developmentso you can decide whether youd like to create a
tourists paradise with a highly-educated capitalist populace or an agrarian
socialist workers utopia, and partly because as dictator you can accomplish these
goals by either using a little well-placed social engineering or just busting down doors
in the middle of the night. You can also decide to do this for the good of the people or
for the good of your Swiss bank accounts. This gives you a lot of decisions to make, and
playing Tropico successfully takes planning and forethought.
Fortunately, for
all its depth Tropicos a fairly easy game to get into. It has an excellent tutorial,
and is very scalableyou can choose to play on various difficulty settings, and with
different victory conditions. You can also play several pre-designed scenarios. Before
each game, youll also be asked to create a persona for yourselfyou can either
select a pre-made dictator persona or create your own. This allows you to choose your
background, how you came to power, two sterling qualities, and two miserable flaws. All of
these choices will affect how you are perceived by your populace, and also grant certain
special abilities or penalties. Again, it helps to have a general plan for your islands
development before you do this. If you want a military dictatorship, its not bad to
be a Generalissimo who took over in a coup. On the other hand, if you want to build a
tourist-driven economy you might want to be an ex-pop singer who won a popular election.
If you see yourself as a captain of industry, you might want to choose the green
thumb quality, which cuts down on pollution. If your tastes run towards the
hedonistic, you might want to be a charismatic alcoholic womanizer.
You begin the game
with a pretty raggedy island. Youll have a presidential palace, a few farms, a
construction office, some teamsters for transport, and a lot of sheds. The first order of
business will be to get an economy up and running, and the easiest way to do that is by
changing a few of the farms from corn to cash crops. Tropico features an impressive series
of informational overlays that provide such information as where certain crops will
thrive, so youll quickly be able to determine what farms to change to sugar or
tobacco plantations. Once the money starts pouring in (and this will happen only after
your teamsters walk to the farm, take the crop to a dock, and load it on a ship) you can
begin to expand your economy by building mines, establishing tourist hotels, and throwing
up power plants and factories. Placement is everything in Tropico. If you put hotels too
close to your tenements, tourists will avoid them, if your housing is too far from your
work sites, your laborers wont make the trip. While industries can do a lot for your
nations cash flow, theyre noisy and dirty and no one wants to live near them,
so your peoples quality of life tends to decline in their vicinity. Running your
island nations economy is a delicate balancing actyou have to exploit
available resources, attract tourists, feed your people, watch the environment, and build
an infrastructure of roads and power to support it. Without a carefully devised economic
plan, youll soon find yourself out of money and the peoples favor. You can
also receive foreign aid by pleasing either Russia or the USA, and can even enter into an
alliance with themat the price of allowing a military base on your island. Be
careful, though--anger one of the superpowers, and you face a game-ending invasion.
You must also
manage your islands society, which is made up of several factions, including the
military, capitalists, communists, the church, intellectuals, and environmentalists.
Clearly not all of their goals and desires are the same, and one or more of them will
probably be upset with your governance most of the time. Each faction has specific demandsthe
religious flocks will want churches and cathedrals, communists will demand wage parity,
militarists will insist upon powerful well-paid soldiers. All of them will want decent
housing, food, and entertainment. Its up to you provide these things, El Presidente,
and the games complexity means that youll often be lacking in one area or the
other, which means youll be faced with critical decisions about who benefits and who
doesnt. Do you sacrifice education for tourism? Do you respond to the militarists
demand for a new armory rather than the socialists call for a new radio station? Do
you offer substandard housing while building up the capitalists (and your own) bank
account on the backs of underpaid workers in high-tech sweat shops? Rest assured youll
need to throw everyone a bone from time to time, thoughotherwise youll face
the spectre of very angry rebels attacking your outlying farms.
Since youll
occasionally find yourself in tough situations, its nice to know that you can bail
yourself out of some of the worst by issuing edicts, a sort of a deus ex
machina that will preserve your hide in crisis situations--for a price. For example,
if your popularity is very low and an election looms, you can always pay some money for
the Mardi Gras edict, which increases your tourism and entertainment ratings and gives a
nice boost to your reputation. If you find the Church very upset, you can issue an
Inquisition edict, and you can attempt to quell pesky rebellions by offering the Amnesty
edict.
The most successful
default strategy in Tropico is typically playing towards the middle, and on default
settings you can usually make everyone pretty happy while building a bustling economy. But
at higher difficulty levels, resources are scarcer, and youll often find factions in
rebellion. This is where the game becomes very challenging, and where youll find
yourself issuing edicts for the assassination of very popular political rivals and
building jails for malcontents. It is, however, very difficult to play the game like a
little Allende. While you can rule through with mass imprisonments and political
bribes and military force, youll be faced with constant revolts, flagging tourism,
and a weakened economy. Some reviewers have
expressed dismay that its not easier to be a hardass dictator in this game, but this
isnt Quake III. Outright slaughter and despotism have consequences, and if you throw
someone in the slammer or line them up against a wall, their family isnt going to
care much for you, and neither are their friends, and eventually neither is anyone else.
All of this is modeled in the game, and makes the use of force a tricky and oftentimes
risky option.
On the graphics
side of the ledger, Tropico looks very good;; you island looks positively idyllic and
think clouds roll over it, structures and detailed and attractive, and the 2D sprites of
your people are nicely modeled, informative and look sharp even at the highest zoom
levels. The games interface is easy to access and handy, and while you might have to
go one or two menus in for some information, this is forgiveable in a game this deep. A
real bonus is the games excellent soundtrack of Latino music.
The only quibbles I
have with the game is that it can run a little slowly at timesespecially when you
get a couple hundred inhabitants and several dozen buildings up, scrolling can get a
little choppy. Its also unfortunate, given the games emphasis on careful
placement of structures, that you cant rotate all buildings for easier placement.
Somelike docksyou can, but apartments are set at a fixed orientation, which
makes for some awkward and frustrating moments.
But Tropicos
real strength is its gameplay, which is very complex and addictive. The game has so many
variables that I havent touched onlike weather patterns, crop rotation,
structure upgrades, fishing fleets, propaganda, internal politics and tradethat even
after a couple dozen games Im still being surprised by many of the games
subtleties. If youre a fan of strategy or sim games, Tropicos combination of
sun-drenched personality, irreverent humor, and compelling and complex gameplay make this
one a must-have.
Rick
Fehrenbacher |