Tropico 3 PC Game Review

I bet you're tired of playing SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 to death. You want new challenges and perhaps become the dictator you always thought you could be. Well, you should being playing Tropico 3.

Tropico 3 is basically city building just like Cities XL and SimCity 4, but with this game, you're building an entire country called "Tropico" during the Cold War. As Tropico's leader, El Presidente, the goal is simple: lead your Caribbean island nation to prosperity through democracy or dictatorship. This game combines city management with a wide variety of factors that any world leader would face including a nation's economy, law enforcement, armed rebels, and transportation.

One personal part of Tropico 3 and its processors that I've enjoyed a lot was dealing with numerous political factions home and abroad. You can with allied with America and still be a dictator of a banana republic. Or perhaps, you want to be a Communist and spread the wealth to all of your citizens. Don't worry about pleasing everyone, since, if you a few enemies you want to take care of, you can have them assassinated, exile, or locked up in prison.

Just like any city/nation building game, you'll be able to choose scenarios of your liking, adjust its' difficulty, and even create yourself as the leader to suit your personal style. A small nod goes to the music during game play and the funny, radio commentary by the fictional radio station Tropico News Today that will comment on your actions from time to time depending on the biggest news that occurred at the time during game play (ex. Invasion by USA/USSR, slumlord housing, rebels, etc.).

If you tried Tropico or Tropico 2, Tropico 3 is a nice breath of fresh air and worth trying on the PC. Additionally, if you want to try a strategy game that don't involved building the same city time and time again, give Tropico 3 a chance, it might grow on you. Finally, please don't try to play this game on the Xbox 360. I tried the demo and it crashed my Xbox 360 console a few times. Granted, it's not that easy to play a strategy game on a video game console, but for comfort of a keyboard shortcut to adjust a worker's salary and a click of the mouse to build a new military base will always feel more comfortable and simplistic compared to a gamepad controller.