Tropico

The Good
The music was certainly good and the graphics were excellent. There was also a lot of information about the people on your island. Each person had their own name, country of birth, house and family. When I first saw this amount of detail, I thought that this game could be worth the £30 I paid for it. However, I was wrong.

The Bad
The limited number of maps available. You can either create your own island are play one of the ingame scenarios. I played a couple of the scenarios (there are only six in total) and created a couple of my own islands and after this I got a bit tired.

The Bottom Line
Overall, the idea for the game was good: run a small Carribean island for anything up to 70 years. The information available for each person was also outstanding. However, the limited number of game worlds meant that the replayability of the game was relativley low. Perhaps I should have payed £20 instead of £30 or perhaps I shouldn't have bought it at all.

The Good
This game is rich in environment. The music is sublime and sets the mood. The graphics are a treat to watch, and match form and function. There is a tremendous amount of personality and charm imbued in gameplay.

The challenges of laying out a city will draw you in and force you to really think about how to accomplish what you need to do. The game is engineered to make you observe and think about how to lay things out.

The Bad
Its fairly easy in the beginning, but it starts to get really difficult as you approach the the 30 year mark. You can only stay in power as long as you are elected or maintain a force to stave off an attack. Even if you're doing a great job, the people will start looking at the things you may have failed and still vote you out of office.

There are a handful of missions, but hardly more than the ones that came as the demo.

The Bottom Line
Super tough, but addictive.

The Good
I loved the setting for the game. Your a Latin American dictator and its all up to you. Music was outstanding and really boosted the score that I gave it.

I really wanted to like tropico, the Latin music, a refreshing concept, great graphics, and generally lots of potential. However.......

The Bad
....Well if the music had been cheesy then this would have to be rated at about 52%. Tropico just gets old very fast. Once I played a couple of the scenerios, and tried to design my own island I quickly ran out of challenges. Really there isnt much difference between the scenarios and the regular game. After a very short time Tropico just goes flat. There was so much potential to this game its a shame that did use its license better.

Another example of what I mean is that I downloaded the demo of this game from the net.  After playing a few hours, I felt that if this was half the game, then tropico would be fantastic.  The only problem was that there is almost no difference between the demo and the full game!  Only a couple of options are excluded and frankly you can live with out them.  So it was a surprise when I started playing the full version and found almost no difference at all!  I hoped that in the full version that there would be more options and lots more fun.  However much to my sadness there wasn't.  <br><br>**The Bottom Line**<br>Save yourself 40 bucks download the demo.  The demo is just as enjoyable as the full version.  Plus you can save your money and buy something else.

The Good
I must admit the music (especially the opening music) is very entertaining. The first challenges on how to gain money for you island was kinda fun, but when you got that solved, its downhill from there...

The Bad
Seriously. I wonder if the makers of this game ever tried playing this game, or if they were ever gamers in the first place.

Let's start... First mistake in this game: NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION on basically everything. When you're used to these city-type simulation games, you're likely used to the fact that they give you information on every tool, icon, and stuff. This game was definitely made for those who don't read much...sigh. (plus no link between the manual while playing the game).

Second. NO CAMPAIGN GAME PLAN. Egad, making a game like this and the only thing to teach you is that one time tutorial. The campaign is only a stand alone game, no connecting stories or such, pretty shallow really.

Third....below please.

The Bottom Line
You'd find more challenges playing minesweeper for all I'm concerned. Experienced players should avoid this game at all costs, not even worth the mention. Somehow I get the feeling the makers weren't giving much effort in this game...