Our favourite El Presidente is back with a very well-optimised engine and a bunch of new features, buildings, nations and goofy tongue-in-cheek characters.
It also introduces social networking capabilities so that gregarious dictators can tweet or Facebook their accomplishments to friends and followers, raising fascinating questions about the circles totalitarians might keep.
The Tropico series has been around since the early noughties, giving players their chance to head their very own banana republic through either benevolent dictatorship or greedy, corrupt totalitarianism.
Whichever route you choose, Generalissimo Santana is sure to remind you that your most valuable and most dangerous assets are your civilians.
Graphical performance has been optimised at the cost of graphical quality. Tropico 3’s high-density forests have been cut to a manageable size and the detailed bump-map of its mountain ranges eroded for the sequel, significantly improving on its notorious zoom and scroll stutter.
This really isn’t such a big deal when considering that very little meaningful graphical quality has been lost and the difference in performance is tangible on even the most enthusiast of PCs. There’s a distinct feeling while playing Tropico 4 that either Haemimont Games or Kalypso Media did this with the intention of making their game more accessible to a wider audience.
Tropico’s Latin soundtrack makes a return, with catchy hum-inducing tunes that will always remind you of El Presidente whenever you have dinner at your nearest Copacabana-esque beach-side restaurant. Possibly also of Barry Manilow.
Two new radio presenters are introduced to entertain and occasionally annoy: Penultimo, an El Presidente loyalist and Sunny Flowers, a hippy who insists on there never being enough garbage dumps on every single island.
What doesn’t seem to be mentioned very often is that Tropico 4 makes use of the Kalypso Media launcher which gives players the option to sign up using their CD-key and compare high-scores with other registered users. It is entirely optional and not a prerequisite to being able to play Tropico 4 and, if playing in Steam using offline mode, the launcher doesn’t even bother starting.
Kudos to Kalypso for not forcing customers to use this service and for not falling prey to the permanent internet connection demon currently influencing other mainstream publishers.
Gameplay hasn’t changed much; it’s still terrific fun having some unruly pleb assassinated and micro-managing still remains, conjuring the spirit of C. Montgomery Burns muttering “Excellent” as strategic planning begins to bear fruit. Often quite literally as your corn, papaya and tobacco farms start bringing in the big bucks.
Building more than one dock to support imports to sustain your industries is remarkably beneficial and an improved overlay shows pollution, crime and other unpleasantness for El Presidente to rectify.
Tidal waves, droughts and oil spills are just some of the natural disasters El Presidente has to contend with and make appropriate decisions regarding. Conserve water at the cost of an unhappy nation or let the taps run free, risking dehydration and deaths? Mop up the oil spill for a costly sum and protect your fishing industry or leave it and upset the environmentalists. It’s always tough choices for El Presidente!
The introduction of an administrable council of ministers whom you’re able to consult, hire or fire at will is an excellent touch. Ministers’ availability, skill, intelligence, courage and leadership, depend on which buildings you’ve constructed, quality of life as well as the quality of education available on your island. Well-suited ministerial candidates seem to have eventual consequences which can sometimes be beneficial such as a discount on buildings or negative as in the case of nationalists disagreeing with your appointment being a foreigner.
Other snazzy new features include the option to import raw materials for your industrial buildings and optional quests offered to players by faction leaders and nations. Such quests might include exporting $20,000 of Tropican goods, building a certain number of a specific building or shipping 1,000 weapons to the Middle East. Relations with the relevant quest-giver will improve and El Presidente might even get a substantial cash incentive to put toward his Swiss retirement fund. Wink, wink.
Tropico 4 consists of 20 campaign maps each posing different challenges to El Presidente as well as a sandbox mode for the more discerning dictator who might prefer to do things his own way and in his own time without any particular mission objectives.
It’s not unusual to imagine, on occasion, what you would do differently had you authoritarian power over a nation. Perhaps filled with self-righteous certainty that you would be benevolent, providing first-rate education, world-class healthcare and put the rest of the world to shame. On the other hand, perhaps you’ve imagined ruling with an iron fist, pouring resources into an intimidating armed force, assassinating opportunistic faction leaders and unruly protesters for being miserable under your beneficent rule.
Well here’s your chance.
Tropico 4 remains much the same as its predecessor and doesn’t stray far from what worked the last time. It remains one of the best construction and management simulations on the market while maintaining its appeal to veterans of the series and newbies alike.
There is little doubt that some fans will complain about the graphic optimisations when compared to its predecessor. However, the difference would only be upsetting to the most puerile fan of the series and in no way impacts or detracts from the fantastic city-building gameplay Tropico has become synonymous with.
The differences aren’t varied enough to justify the price of a new game for die-hard fans of Tropico 3 who aren’t too interested in the minor new introductions. After all, they’re both still very much the same game, often feeling as though Tropico 4 is the game Tropico 3 should have been.
However, the introduction of the ministry, the new buildings, music, radio hosts, the ability to import resources and, of course, its optimisations makes it a game that overshadows its predecessor. After playing it, Tropico 3 will always feel as though it’s missing a certain something.
While the price of Tropico 4 isn’t justifiable for fans of the third game who might be fence-sitting, it remains a game worth getting; especially if it’s your first experience with the series and if the changes are meaningful enough to you to warrant it.
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