GBU Review - Tropico 3
Description
This is a review for the Xbox 360 version of Tropico 3. The game first came out on PC last October (both in the US and in Europe), and this February it came out on the Xbox 360 in the US, but it had come out in the Europe a while ago already. Tropico 3, as you may know, takes place during the Cold War and after that, and you play the leader/president of a banana republic island by the name of Tropico. It's a strategy, city-building game, in which you have to both improve the infrastructure of the island, as well as control the political side of it. You have to make sure that all major factions on the island (such as communists, militarists, religious etc.) and their leaders are happy. To maintain their happiness, you have to build different buildings, issue edicts or change government policies. Of course, during the game, you also have to make sure that both Russia and United States are okay with your banana republic, otherwise they will stop giving you financial aid and if you go too far, they may even invade the island. That's Tropico 3 in a nutshell. Of course, there is a lot more to the game, and you can read all about that on Giant Bomb dot com.The Good
- The game is highly addictive, I spent nearly 6 hours straight on it when playing it for the first time. That was back in October and on the PC though, but the Xbox 360 version is just as addicting.
- The game looks very nice visually, the flora and fauna on the island looks stunning. The Xbox 360 version doesn't look quite as good as the PC version, though.
- Being El Presidente is very fun, there's no pre-determined way of playing, you can play the game your way - be either a communist or a capitalist, have honest elections or fake the results - it's your choice.
- Best city building game in years, the building aspect is done very well.
- Great soundtrack, nearly as good as the original Tropico's.
The Bad
- There's little change to the actual gameplay since Tropico. It's still very fun and all, but more new stuff would have been appreciated.
- The avatar system - before you start the actual game, you can choose to create your own El Presidente, or select from a list of pre-made ones. The traits/cons system works well, but the in-game avatar gameplay seemed kind of pointless and boring to me.
- The controls are very stiff on the Xbox 360, not to say that it wasn't expected to be that way, as most strategy games on the 360 suffer from this.
The Ugly
- The technical side of the game isn't very polished - there's certain screen taring now and then, the framerate can be very unstable. The game has also crashed on me a few times.
