I haven't done it in a while, so it's time once again to prove that I'm a complete dork who's tragically behind the times...
So the other day I found myself wandering the aisles of the Wal-Mart in Boiling Springs. Yeah, I know...believe me, no one was more surprised than me. But, seeing as I have no common sense whatsoever, it would follow that I can't be trusted to exercise good judgment either.
Anyways, a two-pack of strategy games for PC caught my eye: "Stronghold" and "Tropico: Mucho Macho Edition." Yes, they're horribly dated (I think the copyright date on both of them is 2001), but hey, two games for less than $10? How could I go wrong?
Please feel free to insert all snide comments in the space provided. Go ahead and get it out of your system now; I promise you'll feel much better afterwards. _______
Well, I still haven't gotten around to playing Stronghold, for the simple reason that Tropico provides a relatively harmless outlet for my inner dictator. Hey, you're talking about the guy voted "Most Likely To Stage A Communist Revolution" by his friends in high school, so games like this are custom-made for guys like me.
From the game's own promotional literature: "You, the newly installed dictator of an obscure Caribbean island, must create a life of prosperity and happiness for your people. Build farms to feed them, tenements to house them, industries to employ them, pubs to lift their spirits, and churches to save their souls. Success will bring the praise of your people along with a fat Swiss bank account. Failure? Well, there's always martial law."
In short, I get to micro-manage everything from rents and wages to industries, health care, education, agriculture, immigration, and even foreign policy. Oh, the power!
It gives me the ability to be any kind of dictator I want, but since this is ME we're discussing here I always wind up being benevolent and incorruptible. So far I've run three islands: my first was an agrarian society which is now on the verge of bankruptcy, the second had a tourism-based economy and my reign ended in a military coup, but my third...I've finally got it right. All my citizens have free health care, free education, and are well-fed. They all have good jobs (no unemployment!) with decent wages well above the Caribbean average, and all have access to decent, affordable housing. I have a well-funded social security program in place to take care of my retirees. The crime rate is virtually nonexistent, and my citizens enjoy the highest degree of liberty in the region. My economy is well-balanced and diverse: I've got two very productive gold mines, an environmentally-sensitive logging operation, plenty of farms that grow everything from coffee to bananas to sugar to pineapples to tobacco to corn, a few factories that produce jewelery and cigars for export, and a small but growing tourism industry. I hold free and fair elections every six years...and win re-election every time.
Yet, despite it all, it's far from idyllic. My island is routinely hit by both hurricanes and diseases that wreak havoc on my infrastructure. Despite my neutral foreign policies, the US has never particularly liked me (primarily because my island's communist faction DOES.) My military routinely complains that I don't have enough troops to fight off a chimpanzee, much less a guerrilla army, and the religious faction has never cared too much for me either. (I'm sorry, but why I should dump insane amounts of money into two sectors of the economy that don't actually PRODUCE anything?) And, as a small island nation, fluctuations in the global markets always take my economy for a ride, despite my best diversification efforts...
See, I told you I'm a dork.
But there you have it...Tropico has taken over the pathetic vestige of a life I once had. Most normal people would probably find it to be boring, repetitive, and tedious, but true megalomaniacal policy wonks like me will gladly sacrifice such trivial and completely unnecessary luxuries as, say, sleep and social lives for the opportunity to get their "fix" in computer simulations like this.
Play if you dare, but you've been warned!
Dang, I just realized. Richard is right...I'm DEFINITELY in the right major. Muhahahaha!
So the other day I found myself wandering the aisles of the Wal-Mart in Boiling Springs. Yeah, I know...believe me, no one was more surprised than me. But, seeing as I have no common sense whatsoever, it would follow that I can't be trusted to exercise good judgment either.
Anyways, a two-pack of strategy games for PC caught my eye: "Stronghold" and "Tropico: Mucho Macho Edition." Yes, they're horribly dated (I think the copyright date on both of them is 2001), but hey, two games for less than $10? How could I go wrong?
Please feel free to insert all snide comments in the space provided. Go ahead and get it out of your system now; I promise you'll feel much better afterwards. _______
Well, I still haven't gotten around to playing Stronghold, for the simple reason that Tropico provides a relatively harmless outlet for my inner dictator. Hey, you're talking about the guy voted "Most Likely To Stage A Communist Revolution" by his friends in high school, so games like this are custom-made for guys like me.
From the game's own promotional literature: "You, the newly installed dictator of an obscure Caribbean island, must create a life of prosperity and happiness for your people. Build farms to feed them, tenements to house them, industries to employ them, pubs to lift their spirits, and churches to save their souls. Success will bring the praise of your people along with a fat Swiss bank account. Failure? Well, there's always martial law."
In short, I get to micro-manage everything from rents and wages to industries, health care, education, agriculture, immigration, and even foreign policy. Oh, the power!
It gives me the ability to be any kind of dictator I want, but since this is ME we're discussing here I always wind up being benevolent and incorruptible. So far I've run three islands: my first was an agrarian society which is now on the verge of bankruptcy, the second had a tourism-based economy and my reign ended in a military coup, but my third...I've finally got it right. All my citizens have free health care, free education, and are well-fed. They all have good jobs (no unemployment!) with decent wages well above the Caribbean average, and all have access to decent, affordable housing. I have a well-funded social security program in place to take care of my retirees. The crime rate is virtually nonexistent, and my citizens enjoy the highest degree of liberty in the region. My economy is well-balanced and diverse: I've got two very productive gold mines, an environmentally-sensitive logging operation, plenty of farms that grow everything from coffee to bananas to sugar to pineapples to tobacco to corn, a few factories that produce jewelery and cigars for export, and a small but growing tourism industry. I hold free and fair elections every six years...and win re-election every time.
Yet, despite it all, it's far from idyllic. My island is routinely hit by both hurricanes and diseases that wreak havoc on my infrastructure. Despite my neutral foreign policies, the US has never particularly liked me (primarily because my island's communist faction DOES.) My military routinely complains that I don't have enough troops to fight off a chimpanzee, much less a guerrilla army, and the religious faction has never cared too much for me either. (I'm sorry, but why I should dump insane amounts of money into two sectors of the economy that don't actually PRODUCE anything?) And, as a small island nation, fluctuations in the global markets always take my economy for a ride, despite my best diversification efforts...
See, I told you I'm a dork.
But there you have it...Tropico has taken over the pathetic vestige of a life I once had. Most normal people would probably find it to be boring, repetitive, and tedious, but true megalomaniacal policy wonks like me will gladly sacrifice such trivial and completely unnecessary luxuries as, say, sleep and social lives for the opportunity to get their "fix" in computer simulations like this.
Play if you dare, but you've been warned!
Dang, I just realized. Richard is right...I'm DEFINITELY in the right major. Muhahahaha!
andromeda:
Fun video games! I'm a little slow on the pics, but I'll be sending them sometime soon. Hope you had a good weekend! 