Extensive impressions of the latest in the tycoon and city management series
25 July 2011 | By James Day
Ever wanted to run your own country? That’s essentially what the Tropico games have allowed players to do since the release of the original back in 2001. Set across several fictional Caribbean islands during the Cold War era, the series has always provided an addictive blend of tycoon management and civilisation simulation.
Ten years and two games later, Tropico 4 is almost ready for release. So what’s new this time around?
The series shares many similarities with the Sim City games, one of which being the disasters that can afflict your developing nation. In Tropico 4 these violent acts of nature and industrial accidents have received a big overhaul. While essentially designed to a hindrance to you, in Tropico 3 they were merely an exercise in randomly destroying a few of your buildings. Here, they’re a lot more varied due to new additions like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions but also a broader range of resulting ramifications.
For example, oil spillages will decimate the local fish population, potentially effecting your fishing operations and economy. Tsunamis can wash up giant sea vessels onto your island, creating an eyesore for tourists and the environmentalists among your population and potentially blocking your expansion efforts.
As a result of this greater emphasis on disasters, several new buildings are at your disposal to help deal with them. The most prominent is the weather station that will warn you of upcoming extreme weather conditions and seismic activity. On islands where fiery volcanic eruptions are likely, placing one of the new fire stations is also a must if you want to prevent your buildings from burning to the ground.
Disasters look great too, having been granted spectacular new animations and even cut scenes when they occur. The ability to rebuild destroyed structures with a single click (as opposed to Tropico 3 where you had to remember what the buildings were and then manually replace them) is also a very welcome addition.
Much like Tropico 3’s expansion Absolute Power, many new tourist-focused buildings have been added. The theme park, water park, shopping mall and cruise liner are all at your disposal to pull even more money from foreign visitors to your banana republic.
Perhaps the single most important new structure, however, is the ministry building. Essentially allowing you to form your own government, the ministry has you cherry picking five of your citizens to become one of the ministers of economy, foreign affairs, education, interior and defence. Not only will filling each role open up the use of certain buildings and edicts but your ministers will also work for you behind the scenes. For example, a minister of defence will often prevent rebel uprisings against your regime from occurring.
You can’t choose just anyone for these roles though as only people from each specific industry can be assigned the role. Teachers and scientists can only be considered for minister of education, while soldiers can only be picked for the minister of defence, for example. The more diverse your civilisation and its industries, the wider the range of individuals you’ll have to pick from. Given that each potential minister has a certain skill level ranging from abysmal to exceptional you’ll want to have as large a pool as possible to draw from for finding the most effective person for the job at hand.
Though Tropico 4 is clearly running on an expanded version of the Tropico 3 engine, there have been several changes to the surface level of the game. The user interface has been slightly redesigned to make information a little easier to find, comprehend and appear less daunting to simulation novices.
News and information is now relayed to you through a variety of characters, each with partially voiced dialogue. Whether they’re figures representing the different faction of your populace or political figures from other nations (which are usually caricatures of real world politicians like Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher and Yasser Arafat) it’s nice to break away from the voiceless and faceless text boxes of the past.
You’ll be hearing a lot from this wide assortment of characters largely thanks to the larger emphasis on side quests. Tropico 3’s campaign was very objective-based but here even in sandbox missions you’ll be able to partake in additional tasks for varying bonuses.
In the preview build we played the game was perhaps a little too similar to its predecessor in a few ways. For example, the edicts you can issue are exactly the same as that of Tropico 3 with the Absolute Power expansion. The biggest similarity though was the reuse of the last game’s music.
Don’t get me wrong, these upbeat Latin numbers were genuinely excellent and complimented the game’s tone perfectly. But there simply weren’t enough of them to sustain an experience designed to be enjoyed for dozens of hours. In Tropico 3 I eventually had to mute the music as I had heard the entire soundtrack too many times. When I realised it was the exact same tracks playing in Tropico 4 I was really disappointed. Hopefully, they are only acting as placeholder music until the final retail version of the game.
It’s obvious even outside of this preview build that Tropico 4 isn’t going to be as dramatic a leap as Tropico 1 was to 2, or 2 was to 3. As a result, it might not blow existing series fans away. With that said, this refined evolution of Tropico 3 might be the best place for series newcomers to start their megalomaniacal reign. Tropico 4 will be populating PCs and Xbox 360 consoles sometime this year.
Most Anticipated Feature: While the improved disasters add a nice presentational boost, the new buildings are what it’s all about. The ministry and weather station in particular change up the way you need to go about building your island civilisation.
Ten years and two games later, Tropico 4 is almost ready for release. So what’s new this time around?
 |
| The new disasters not only look great but add a good deal of variety to how the game goes about trashing your well-crafted civilisation |
The series shares many similarities with the Sim City games, one of which being the disasters that can afflict your developing nation. In Tropico 4 these violent acts of nature and industrial accidents have received a big overhaul. While essentially designed to a hindrance to you, in Tropico 3 they were merely an exercise in randomly destroying a few of your buildings. Here, they’re a lot more varied due to new additions like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions but also a broader range of resulting ramifications.
For example, oil spillages will decimate the local fish population, potentially effecting your fishing operations and economy. Tsunamis can wash up giant sea vessels onto your island, creating an eyesore for tourists and the environmentalists among your population and potentially blocking your expansion efforts.
As a result of this greater emphasis on disasters, several new buildings are at your disposal to help deal with them. The most prominent is the weather station that will warn you of upcoming extreme weather conditions and seismic activity. On islands where fiery volcanic eruptions are likely, placing one of the new fire stations is also a must if you want to prevent your buildings from burning to the ground.
Disasters look great too, having been granted spectacular new animations and even cut scenes when they occur. The ability to rebuild destroyed structures with a single click (as opposed to Tropico 3 where you had to remember what the buildings were and then manually replace them) is also a very welcome addition.
Much like Tropico 3’s expansion Absolute Power, many new tourist-focused buildings have been added. The theme park, water park, shopping mall and cruise liner are all at your disposal to pull even more money from foreign visitors to your banana republic.
 |
| The developers have taken an “if it ain’t broke…” attitude in many areas of the game though there are new buildings, islands and a new campaign to experience |
Perhaps the single most important new structure, however, is the ministry building. Essentially allowing you to form your own government, the ministry has you cherry picking five of your citizens to become one of the ministers of economy, foreign affairs, education, interior and defence. Not only will filling each role open up the use of certain buildings and edicts but your ministers will also work for you behind the scenes. For example, a minister of defence will often prevent rebel uprisings against your regime from occurring.
You can’t choose just anyone for these roles though as only people from each specific industry can be assigned the role. Teachers and scientists can only be considered for minister of education, while soldiers can only be picked for the minister of defence, for example. The more diverse your civilisation and its industries, the wider the range of individuals you’ll have to pick from. Given that each potential minister has a certain skill level ranging from abysmal to exceptional you’ll want to have as large a pool as possible to draw from for finding the most effective person for the job at hand.
Though Tropico 4 is clearly running on an expanded version of the Tropico 3 engine, there have been several changes to the surface level of the game. The user interface has been slightly redesigned to make information a little easier to find, comprehend and appear less daunting to simulation novices.
News and information is now relayed to you through a variety of characters, each with partially voiced dialogue. Whether they’re figures representing the different faction of your populace or political figures from other nations (which are usually caricatures of real world politicians like Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher and Yasser Arafat) it’s nice to break away from the voiceless and faceless text boxes of the past.
You’ll be hearing a lot from this wide assortment of characters largely thanks to the larger emphasis on side quests. Tropico 3’s campaign was very objective-based but here even in sandbox missions you’ll be able to partake in additional tasks for varying bonuses.
In the preview build we played the game was perhaps a little too similar to its predecessor in a few ways. For example, the edicts you can issue are exactly the same as that of Tropico 3 with the Absolute Power expansion. The biggest similarity though was the reuse of the last game’s music.
 |
| Much like Tropico 3’s expansion, Tropico 4 places a greater emphasis on bringing tourists to your Caribbean island |
Don’t get me wrong, these upbeat Latin numbers were genuinely excellent and complimented the game’s tone perfectly. But there simply weren’t enough of them to sustain an experience designed to be enjoyed for dozens of hours. In Tropico 3 I eventually had to mute the music as I had heard the entire soundtrack too many times. When I realised it was the exact same tracks playing in Tropico 4 I was really disappointed. Hopefully, they are only acting as placeholder music until the final retail version of the game.
It’s obvious even outside of this preview build that Tropico 4 isn’t going to be as dramatic a leap as Tropico 1 was to 2, or 2 was to 3. As a result, it might not blow existing series fans away. With that said, this refined evolution of Tropico 3 might be the best place for series newcomers to start their megalomaniacal reign. Tropico 4 will be populating PCs and Xbox 360 consoles sometime this year.
Most Anticipated Feature: While the improved disasters add a nice presentational boost, the new buildings are what it’s all about. The ministry and weather station in particular change up the way you need to go about building your island civilisation.
