Tropico Mucho Macho Edition

Rating:
Summary: controling the underdogs
Review: very ingrossing an involving game with lots of dicissions to make. control a whole island of hard working under paid people build homes for them, make them pick crops, get tourists to visit.ect...

Rating:
Summary: Lots more than a three hour tour...
Review: Watch out Gilligan's Island! Here's Tropico - Mucho Macho Edition! This edition includes both previously released discs - the main Tropico disc, and the Paradise Island supplement disc. There's also loads of extras, including a CD-Rom based manual for both games.

The game puts you in total control of a small tropical island, and it's up to you - do you want to be a benevolent dictator, giving your citizens a life of luxury; or do you want to be an evil tyrant, giving your citizens only the things you think they deserve; or be someone in between? Options include customizing your own stats - from a religious zealot to an alcoholic womanizer, and lots of other personality options.

The main tutorial is excellent, and gives you enough of the basics to play the game right away, and there are four more advanced tutorials that give you a more in depth look at all of the options available.

Do you build a camp of virtually slave labor by building bunkhouses and tenements for your citizens, or a paradise by building condos and luxury homes, or a travel destination by building hotels and tourist traps, or a combination of any of these, or all of these?

What do you grow? Start with Corn (to feed your citizens) and then try Sugar, Tobacco, Pineapples, and other, more exportable, items - or build farms to provide crops for your factories, including a Cigar Works, a Rum Distillery, a Jewelry Shop, and others. Or build ranches with cows and goats to provide milk and meat for your citizens.

Do you want to explore the ruins of the ancient civilization, and if so, do you want an archaeological dig or a more profitable museum? Do you dig for gold and other metals, or do we try to preserve the ecology with fishing and more rural pursuits? Do you want to form alliances with the benevolent US, or the more controlling Soviets, or try a middle-of the road approach?

The detail is marvelous - you can click on individual citizens to determine their needs, or get a detailed report on the population of the entire island, as well as generalized reports on tourism, food production, and many others. You can request specific citizens to emigrate to your island to run your newly built facilities - everything from farms and ranches to TV stations and tourist traps.

How do you keep your citizens happy? Build restaurants and pubs, and even things like nightclubs and casinos (which also can attract rich and not-so-rich tourists). Put down rebellions with the military, or just give your citizens a raise - but don't try either of these too much or you may find yourself faced with a military coup, a peasant uprising, or simply voted out of office. And that can hurt that Swiss Bank Account you've been putting all that slush money into for your retirement.

There are dozens of scenarios - ranging in difficulty from very easy to insanely hard. Try an easy game after the first tutorial, and then, after the four additional tutorials, try ne of the more challenging scenarios.

There are only two known "cheats" for this game - and no more are needed. (Press and hold control and type "pesos" for more money, and press and hold control and type "contento" for happier citizens.)

As a veteran of several Sim style games, I found this to be highly involving and almost addicting. If you like games like "Civilization" or "The Sims", I can't recommend this game highly enough, especially with the decrease in total price represented by the dual disc box. Try it. I'm sure you'll agree that it's much more than a three hour tour.

Rating:
Summary: Hmm. Too complex for me
Review: Well, this game was an okay game. The graphics were good, and the audio was nice and all, but in order to appreciate and have fun with the game, you have to understand a lot of political terms and junk, which I don't, so I didn't enjoy the game very much. Try the demo first before you buy it to see if you can understand it all.