Some of the guys were great at this online play. I was not one of them! I enjoyed playing, the friendly banter but generally sucked myself at the actual game.
My life has changed, and I play on the console a lot less than I did. I now have a child (not a complaint I promise) which limits the time during the day I have to spend on this sort of thing, and also I no longer stay up till 1 or 2 in the morning playing, only to get up at 6 to go to work and still function. That would not happen. 10 is a late night now!
All that being said, I have mentioned in a previous review how I can use my laptop to game while relaxing with my wife in the evening, watching TV and drinking tea (but not too late or I will be up at 3am to use the toilet).
One of the games in my rotation of PC playing now is Tropico 4. I bought this game as part of a Steam sale (dangerous times of the year!) in about 2013 if my achievements are anything to go by. I played it for a few hours back then, but it slipped of my radar for something else. I decided to give it another chance and I am so glad I did. This game is brilliant.
If you are buying it on Steam today it will cost you £14.99 however for £29.99 you can get the Collectors bundle which includes a boat load of DLC. If you are in no rush, and frankly if you are reading this and have waited that long for a new game, a Steam sale is just around the corner (at the time of writing Christmas is just 35 days away, which usually means a sale of epic proportions) and I would see if it hits the sale before spending £30 on the game. Granted it is worth that much, but if you can get it cheaper why wouldn't you?
So when I first played I think I just did some sandbox level and didn't really get how to play or what it was about, but this time I am attacking the missions and love it. You have a specific challenge to beat and it is a great way to progress your skill in the game and what to do.
So what is Tropico 4?
Tropico 4 is a top(ish) down land management simulation, where you manage the buildings and production on an island. It is similar to SimCity (which is how I found the game). You can choose to be a tourist trap, industrial powerhouse or maybe mine and produce resources for export. Ultimately you end up doing a combination of all 3 to maximise your income streams but some play the game as an extra challenge focussing only one one facet of you as a person/dictator.
You issue edicts and these can be to help the island (social security/free housing) or be a way to subvert the masses (bribe faction leader). Through all this you are also balancing the islands factions needs (religious/environmentalists) with the global factors of the USSR, USA and to a lesser extent Europe, China and the Middle East.
It is great fun to choose a path (mine nearly always ignores the environmentalists and religious) but this can cause problems as strong decent will cause rebels and protests against you and the government. It then comes to election day and you choose to make a speech, or not and even if there are going to be elections. Are they fair elections or do you rig the vote? It has many great twists that you have to consider when running a small island nation.
There are also in built problems you can't avoid (earthquakes, volcanos, oil spills) and you then have to try to manage the clean up. If they happen at the start of a game your funds are low, meaning clean up can take longer hitting you in the wallet.
After a while the missions can feel a little repetitive as you essentially start on a small map with the same few starting features and follow the story from there. Some missions require you be pro environmental, or pro religious and you follow that path to conclusion, some focus on tourism or industry, and while this is part of the problem of it feeling repetitive actually that is why you become a better player in the long run.
If I was to now go back to a standard sandbox map, I would have more confidence in certain areas. I would try to work with every area I had to make money. Divide up my island into tourist traps and industrial pollution zones.
It's also worth mentioning that you have to worry about traffic and where to place your garages in Tropico 4. If things get busy on the roads the transportation of raw materials and goods can take a while to get about and again impact your wallet. (It's not just garages, its construction offices and teamsters offices).
With the DLC I have more story modes I have not touched yet (I want to do the main campaign first) but they also offer other options. In the main game the highest export I can produce is fine jewelry, however in one of the other DLC's I could make cars. This has a much higher export value, but I expect you have to mine more things and may have other things you needed to compete one unit for export (at a greater cost).
So should you buy Tropico 4, well, I think so because I did. It's fun and if you are into "god-like" strategy games (Age of Empires, Civilization etc) then this game fits nicely into that genre of strategy type game. If you never liked SimCity, then stay away this game is not for you. I will keep playing this (along with Prison Architect) and build my islands (or prisons) and love every minute of it.
On the flip side to all this you can also now get Tropico 5 (hence why this review site is called I guess I missed that). Although there are many people that prefer 4 as by all accounts 5 was rushed a little to market, fixing some problems but causing others.
So in short, check this game out it's worth it, especially if you get it cheaply on Steam then it's worth the punt even if you never liked this sort of game before.
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