Bienvenido el Presidente!

Kalypso’s long running Tropico series will soon be washing up on a golden, palm tree fringed beach called PS4, marking the first time one of the island-nation building games has come to casa de Playstation. I for one could not be more excited! Let’s take a little goosey gander shall we? Before I get started, take a peek at this video showing some of the PS4’s gameplay in action. I’ll be waiting for you…

Good, you’re back. If you’re wondering what your peepers just took in, then let me explain. For through-and-through Playstation owners, it’s quite possible that the Tropico franchise has passed you by entirely, which is a shame because the previous iterations have been stellar. The games fall under the umbrella term of ‘city builders’ but that designation is somewhat disingenuous.

You see, unlike games such as SimCity or the upcoming Cities: Skylines, you are tasked not with building a mere city, but rather an entire island nation. As the omnipotent ‘El Presidente’ of the Island of Tropico, it is your job to grow your little Caribbean island into a thriving banana republic.

The fun comes in the sheer number of ways you can set about toward that end. Will you be a benevolent ruler, who carefully fosters democracy, free speech and fair trade, while earning the ire of the communist faction? Or will you be a iron fisted despot, who murderously suppresses all forms of human rights, enforces military conscription and brings the world to the brink of nuclear war by pissing off the Americans?

Megalomaniac or not, you will also need to decide how exactly your island is going to grow and prosper, and again the possibilities are countless. You might decide to zealously strip the island of it’s natural resources, building mines and lumber mills on every spare inch of ground, turning Tropico into an industrial wasteland and angering the environmentalists. You might instead decided that your island’s fortunes lie with pineapples and become the world’s leading exporter of fresh and canned pineapples, while taking flak from the nationalists due to your lack of international sabre rattling.

Of course, it’s possible to create almost any type of economy you want, though some will be more profitable than others. An island may very well be able to subsist on a lama and lama products based economy, but one that imports raw materials and then exports the processed products will make infinitely more money to syphon off into your Swiss bank account for the good of the nation. Ahem.

These mechanics are staples of the Tropico franchise, but Tropico 5 has introduced a new variable into the equation, that of ‘eras’. One argument that has been made against the series to date is that once you learn how to manage the different factions on the island, the game becomes less interesting.

Personally I find that greater familiarity with the mechanics increases the games fun-factor, because I can then actively push and nudge the various factions into situations of my choosing. An advisor says that the Capitalists are angry about my free social housing programme? Fine, I’ll cajole them into become rebels so that I can exterminate them all with my modernised military. You see? How is that not fun??

But, I digress. The eras mechanic in Tropico 5 introduces a new timeline, similar to the Modern Times DLC that was introduced in Tropico 4. Your island starts it’s life in the Colonial Era, beholden to the British crown. As your game progresses and you accomplish certain objectives, the era will shift into the World War Era. This is followed by the Cold War Era and ending in the Modern Era.

The introduction of the Eras mechanic is aimed at constantly keeping the player engaged during each play-through by changing the background situations as well as the availability of buildings and resources. Your priorities as El Presidente during the colonial administration of Tropico are going to be very different to when the Cold War starts up. Managing the changing times will become as important as deciding exactly when to build that new tourist trap blimp ride.

I can honestly say that I’ve never had more fun with so called ‘city builders’ than I have when playing the Tropico games. They bring a much needed spark of humor to a genre that is otherwise overly dry. From the above mentioned lama’s to the various advisors who pop up to bring you all manner of news and advice, Tropico simply oozes fun.

It’ll be interesting to see how well the controls have been mapped to the DualShock 4, as a clunky interface there will be disastrous. But having played other top-down strategy games on console before and come away impressed, I see no reason why Tropico 5 on PS4 won’t also be pleasing. I’m looking forward to kicking back in my comfy beanbag chair, a Cuba Libre in one hand, the DS4 in the other, just watching the rebels get annihilated while my lama farms take off.

Tropico 5 is out on PS4 later this year. Viva el Presidente!

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Update: Tropico 5 on PS4 will be released on April 28th. 

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