Tropico 4

I'm pretty confident that management games were a pretty major part of the gaming experience for gamer in my generation (People born in the late 1980's) and those who came slightly before and after us. Their simply made them easily playable by everyone but their depth kept us all coming back for more and I think for most people started that challenge-achievement-reward cycle relationship with videogames that simply hasn't stopped since.

Tropico 4 as I'm sure you have figured out is the forth installed in its franchise. The franchises gimmick is that you play the role of a dictator of a Caribbean island nation with all the affiliated drama and bombastic behavior that you would associate with stereotypes from the region and Latin America as a whole. The game was developed by Haemimont Games and published by Kalypso for the Windows OS and Xbox, however, another studio entirely was charged with the development and publication of the Mac OS, that studio being Feral Interactive.  

For the most part Tropico 4 is one of the first management games I've played in a while. I had a pretty massive gap with the my last really intense period of playing games from this genre involving Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Hospital, man those were some great games, then in the last few years I flirted with Football Manager before getting Cities in Motion and Tropico 4. What really drew me into Tropico 4 though is the theme and world that it built. While doing such world building isn't unique in management games, the world that Tropico 4 had built was. I was just really intrigued by the fact that you could attempt to embody some of the worst dictators in human history like Francois Duvalier or become a revolutionary like Fidel Castro or really be anything in between. I don't doubt that the reason behind this draw I felt to the game was my love for history and politics, so I'm pretty sure that anyone who has similar leanings is going to be drawn into the game much the same way I was.

The real strength of management games isn't based in the world they build, they are based in their mechanics. Things like how you can generate resources, controlling you spending and the ability of the game to surprise you and keep you on your toes through the entire experience. These are all things that Tropic 4 does really well in my opinion and it does it on multiple complimentary levels. 

The first and most basic level is pretty standard across most management games and that is the control of your cash flow. This is pretty uniform across most games and its fairly straight forward in Tropico 4 as well. The difference in the game though is that you can follow multiple paths towards a positive flow of cash. You could have a very basic agricultural economy, a very high tech industrial economy, a very raw tourism economy or a blend of these things all the same time. This freedom of choice makes Tropico really unique as each of different economies changes the very nature of how you play the game and the manner in which you interact with the games global economy as you sell items and/or services to it. These different paths to develop your economy do have implications on other parts of the game as well that further enhance your experience.

One of these other parts of the game is managing your society and keeping them under control as your try to ride their effort to success. This is what I felt was the really unique aspect of the game that makes Tropico 4 something more than a standard management game and turns it in a compelling experience since this aspect has a really large impact on your chances of success. One aspect that you have to manage in Tropico 4 that relates to your society are the presidential elections. Losing them instantly loses you the game which in turn means that they are something you always have to worry about as you play which is pretty consistent with the dictator experience since you do have to keep up appearances to keep the commoners happy, or you could just flat out not have the election and risk an island wide revolt where your entire society turns on itself. However, if it ever does get to that point then that means that you've failed the game's other aspect of managing the various societal factions in the game. In the vast majority of cases you just won't be able to keep all the factions happy since some of them are very antagonistic to each other. As a result you are going to have to pick sides and push forward with your society reaping both the benefits and consequences of your choice. This doesn't mean you can't go back and amend your decision, your El Presidente, you can do what you want, what it means is that this is a factor you do need to take into consideration. This ends up causing you to form all types of strange societies like a liberal Junta back the military, nationalist and environmentalist segment of your country or a religious economic powerhouse with backing from the capitalists, religious and education oriented segments of your country. Regardless of what choice you make those the important take away here is that due to this faction mechanic you are always engaged with your society at all points in the game. Its something that makes sure that you don't get bored, that doesn't mean it won't allow you go on auto-pilot to focus on other things as you can do that if you have a stable society, it just makes sure that at any point in the game you always keep an eye on public opinion as any political leader does and yes that includes dictators.

The final layer of management in Tropico 4 takes a step down from the the other two that I already talked. Its also less of a unified system as opposed just a collection of stuff I'm grouping together. This grouping is regarding all the different micromanagement choices you can make during the entire game. Passing specific legal policy in your country, spacing you buildings across the island, killing or arresting specific members of your population and so, so many other choices that are all actually meaningful. I'm not going to describe and get into them all since its just going to be a massive wall of text and the review already has to many of those. The important point is that all these small tiny choices that can be made offer the change to really delve into very specific section of the game and they actually have an impact on the end result of the game, they aren't just pointless choice, they actually help or hinder you and thats what makes them actually interesting to think about and actually consider instead of just going on autopilot and just sticking to the much more macromangement level of the game that is the economy and faction opinion mechanics.

Tropico 4 isn't a game for everyone though. Hell, this entire genre isn't for everyone. At the end of the day the entire management genre is just spread sheet management and its your affinity with the world and theme the developers work on that is the reason you actually engage with it. All I can say for certain is that I really like the game, I enjoyed the use of real dictators, the work that was put into the music and art in the game and the fact that game as a whole doesn't take itself serious with all the characters in the game and its campaign being caricature of various historical figure. But I can definitely see that anyone who has no political or historical interests just won't find this game interesting at all and would lean towards another management game based on their interests.