One of Tropico 4’s most significant improvements is making tourism economically competitive with industry instead of a self-inflicted challenge. Islands based on tourism in Tropico 3 didn’t earn much income and were fairly boring to play due to a lack of options. Tropico 4 introduced a slew of profitable new hotels and attractions, many of which could also be enjoyed by everyday citizens. The Modern Times expansion continues this welcome trend by adding even more buildings and edicts to the tourism mix.
The seven-star hotel, pictured above, is the crown jewel of tourist accommodations. It replaces the skyscraper hotel in 1979, and, like its predecessor, only one can be built per island. Because the seven-star hotel unlocks fairly late during most scenarios and sandbox games, it’s usually possible to build both it and a skyscraper hotel, which is a nice plus. While the number of tourist families who can stay in these buildings is identical, seven-star hotels provide almost double the service quality (an amazing base of 150) and employ only 75% as large a workforce. Their only drawback is that guests rarely leave–they have such a good time hanging out by the two rooftop pools that they neglect to visit Tropico’s other attractions. Still, the huge boost to tourism rating that seven-star hotels provide creates a ripple effect that will benefit those other attractions when guests flock to less-entertaining accommodations and then look for fun in the Caribbean sun.
Not all of the new buildings are so welcome, however.
After the jump: did they have to replace one of my favorites with this thing?! Continue reading →
Like all good city builders, the Tropico series devotes considerable resources to infrastructure and industry. In the real world, traffic, power plants, and pollution can be unsightly nightmares, but in a game setting they’re just interesting problems to be solved. I’m happy to say that this is one area in which the Modern Times expansion excels. While biofarms are so productive that they eliminate money woes from sandbox games and modern apartments are so unbalanced that they render every other form of housing obsolete, the new infrastructure and industrial buildings provide options and enhancements without destroying Tropico’s underlying challenges.
After the jump: riding on the metro Continue reading →
Housing poses one of the most interesting challenges in the base game of Tropico 4. Initially, when money’s tight, most of the downtrodden citizens live in crime-ridden shacks that provide nothing but an incentive to rebel. Upgrading their living conditions is a critical goal, but one with options that provide an interesting series of trade-offs and choices. Do I stuff hordes of my ungrateful workers into cheap low-quality tenements that are just barely good enough to prevent them from shooting me? Do I build dozens of expensive lower occupancy but higher quality apartments? How about condos or mansions for the wealthy and upper-middle class residents, or some combination of these and several other choices?
The net result is often an island whose housing winds up looking pretty realistic, one where grindingly poor neighborhoods stare enviously at the good life that’s just a few unattainable streets away. Towards the end of scenarios where I’m flush with cash and feeling magnanimous, I’ll often demolish the cheaper stop-gap housing that I built to stave off revolution and replace it with higher quality dwellings while basking in the imaginary acclaim of my virtual subjects.
Sadly, the Modern Times expansion eliminates all of the base game’s housing challenges by introducing a single, massively overpowered structure.
After the jump: the only housing building you’ll ever need Continue reading →
The Tropico series of city builders has always been one of my favorites. While it lacks the complexity of the Sim City titles or the accurate historical settings of classic Impressions games and Tilted Mill’s Children of the Nile, Tropico boasts a charm all its own. Its lighthearted approach to Cold War era banana republics and its silly personalities and scenarios disguise solid gameplay mechanics.
The recent Modern Times expansion propels Tropico from the Cold War into the War on Terror, exchanging the Communist Party and Che for the Tea Party and Rupert Murdoch. More importantly, it adds twenty six new buildings and ten edicts for would-be dictators to use and abuse on their populace. Today, I’m going to focus on those that change the fundamental basis of the game’s economy, food production and distribution.
After the jump: how you gonna keep ’em down on the biofarm? Continue reading →
Some people run around recommending great games willy nilly. I’m convinced you can’t always do that. Even great games might come with caveats.
After the jump, seven legitimate reasons to pass on one of the best RPGs ever made Continue reading →
There aren’t any mounts in Xenoblade Chronicles. That I know of. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game surprised me. But for a game with so much running around, you’d think there was a way to get there faster.
After the jump, going the distance Continue reading →
What do Xenoblade Chronicles and Saints Row have in common? A gameplay incentive to run around without any clothes on.
After the jump, we’re going streaking! Continue reading →
Goodbye Chase D’arnaud. Be good Lastings Milledge. Take care Dirk Berkowitz (see you at Thanksgiving).
I’ve been traded. To the New York Mets. Well, the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons for now. On the Vita our home stadium sits amidst non-descript rural greenery, while on the Playstation 3 we’re in a stadium under a bridge with a view of the Empire State Building that’s either in Hoboken or Queens or maybe even geographically impossible.
After the jump, blindsided Continue reading →
Xenoblade Chronicles is on the Wii. Which is, at times, a shame. It is too big for the Wii. It is perhaps even too lovely for the Wii. The amount and scope of its imagination cannot possibly fit on Nintendo’s last-gen system! I keep waiting for everything to abruptly stop because the disc has run out of space.
Part of what this means is that you’re not getting elaborate animation, or even very good animation. When you come to a mining node indicated by a mining pick icon, your characters don’t actually swing a mining pick. It’s as if the developers just decided pick swinging animation wasn’t worth the bother. So the character stands there impassively and sucks colored dust into his body. Mining.
After the jump, where animation counts Continue reading →
Floundering, caught in a statistical tailspin, unable to effectively put bat on ball and looking to recalibrate, I remember and resort to a fallback philosophy of hitting… patience. I vow to not swing at any first pitch, no matter how fat, juicy, and over the plate it may appear.
After the jump, zen and the art of stinking up the joint… Continue reading →
No one is trying to sell me content when I play Xenoblade Chronicles on my Wii. There are no retail exclusives and even if there were, there is no place to enter a code to activate them. There will be no DLC. No one is going to vaguely promise to change the ending. No one is going to sell me a new gun or add skins for Sera or Garrus or Magneto. It’s almost enough to make me not mind spending literally dozens of hours on my Wii playing a single game.
After the jump, the character that would have been DLC Continue reading →
There’s no undo button in Unity of Command. If I move a unit accidentally, I can’t take it back.
The developers say they’re working to add this feature. In the meantime, I can always redo the
scenario. I’m starting to understand how that’s part of the appeal.
After the jump, wargaming’s relationship with history Continue reading →
Despite being currently mired in a slump with no end in sight, I’m tickled pink with this game as of late. The game’s inherent frustrations (in that it accurately models a sport where succeeding a mere three times out of ten can grant you All-Star status) can be maddening while packed in amongst the hordes on a crowded, jostling subway car, but last night as I returned home from my level one Spanish class on a largely empty F train, the enormity of what I held in my hands took root. A burgeoning baseball world, beautifully rendered, creating a portable bubble of alternate reality (I know that’s just a flowery description for any successful handheld game, so sue me).
After the jump, all thumbs Continue reading →
The real time combat in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is quite the cinematic spectacle, thanks to that game’s impressive production values. But as the game itself soldiers on, the spectacle wears off. Eventually combat is just a formality. Battles in Final Fantasy XIII-2 are speed bumps between the cutscenes. Filler. Busywork that isn’t even much work. When combat is one of your primary ways of interacting with the world, you better get combat right. You hear that RPGs? You hear that Final Fantasy XIII-2? You hear that Skyrim?
After the jump, Xenoblade Chronicles hears that Continue reading →
Unity of Command isn’t just a cute game that’s easy to pick up. It also uses an historically relevant supply system that significantly affects gameplay. Without fresh supplies each turn, my units lose combat effectiveness. Even the lowliest Russian peasants can defeat once-mighty panzer divisions that have been cut off too long from supply.
After the jump, we’re not playing Panzer General anymore Continue reading →
