If you do what these goons ask, you earn respect and other bonuses. So instead of just looking at the almanac to see that the tree huggers aren't thrilled about all of your clear-cut logging operations, you now get the likes of Sunny Flowers barking in your face about stopping logging and building a wind turbine. Instead of the anonymous rabble-rousing capitalists, commies, environmentalists, nationalists, and the like from the last game, Tropico 4 assigns each group a leader with specific demands. This added layer of management merely forces you to spend money on constructing a ministry building and then hiring people before you can click on edicts, which are largely the same as in Tropico 3.įactions play a bigger role than before. Even though this is an interesting idea, not enough is done with it. If you don't have these experts in place, you cannot issue policy edicts. You appoint islanders or bring in foreign experts to serve as ministers of portfolios like the interior, foreign affairs, and the military. Politics remain a huge dimension of the game and have even been bumped up in importance this time with the addition of a cabinet.
So you continue to build farms, health clinics, factories, bars, cinemas, cathedrals, power plants, and so forth all to keep your people from sticking your head on a pike. Building a happy, healthy island that doesn't revolt requires feeding people, employing people, entertaining people, and preaching to people. The setting has been shifted from a metropolis to a cartoon Cold War dictatorship. Let's see what your encephalitic cabinet member has to say today.
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Or you can be a benevolent strongman who plays fair at election time and promotes freedom with TV stations and uncensored newspapers. You can play as an absolute tyrant, ordering assassination, stuffing people into prisons, and rigging elections.
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No matter how you play, you have total control of a series of islands with different features, resources, and weaknesses like local volcanoes and earthquake fault lines (natural disasters have been dialled up in the new game to be an ever-present menace). So there is a lot of content here, even if the continuing lack of more conventional multiplayer might turn some people off. Still, the missions are lengthy and feature loads of layered objectives. Support has been added for Facebook and Twitter updates, so you can brag about your banana farms or something, but that's as close as you're going to get to true multiplayer action. One-off challenges made by users are available through an in-game browser as in the last game. As before, the game is solo only, with a 20-scenario campaign where you play itinerant dictator El Presidente, as well as a sandbox mode. The structure mirrors that of Tropico 3 very closely. Gameplay has been structured along second-verse, same-as-the-first lines. New announcers have been added, along with comments from members of citizen factions, but the script is so bland that you only wake up to take notice of what's being said when somebody utters a hot-button word like "rebels."
Nevertheless, the game seems a tad lifeless without Juanito chirping propaganda in the background. The music is still a peppy mix of Tito Puente-ish Latin rhythms, and the visuals are a slightly upgraded yet cheerful splash of Caribbean color that make even run-down shacks and tenements seem somehow appealing. It's hard to figure out why this first-rate bootlicker was removed from the game because his nonstop (if repetitive) quips gave Tropico 3 a lot of its personality. The opening cinematic is a dull balloon ride over an island instead of the military assault previously featured, and your first mission is noteworthy right away, with the omission of goofball DJ Juanito. If anything, Tropico 4 seems stripped down in comparison to its predecessor, at least at first. Series veterans loading the game up for the first time can't help but be shocked at how little has been added in the way of new features. It's all right if that factory hires accident-prone workers: the clinic is right next door.įirst impressions are not good. El Presidente is resting on his laurels this time around. Tropico 4 is another likeable and engaging take on Cold War city building in the tropics, but it looks, feels, and plays much the same as 2009's Tropico 3. Just as the Cuban dictator seemed to spend his entire 50 years in power wearing green fatigues, an army cap, and mirrored sunglasses, the latest addition to the series of banana republic simulations comes dressed in nearly the exact same getup as its predecessor.
Although similarities between the two aren't so great that the CIA will be sending the developers at Haemimont Games a box of exploding cigars anytime soon, the two share the same philosophies about change.