jeriendhal | Video Games, a review and a bit o' news

Tropico 3: Downloaded this from Steam when they had a 60% off weekend and I didn't regret it. Like the original Tropico, T3 can be best described as a "Banana Republic Simulator". You start off with an island full of resources and people, and must balance keeping various factions happy so you can stay elected (though you can indulge in a bit of election fraud or declare martial law) while lining your Swiss bank account. In addition to the basic sandbox mode, you can also play specific scenarios of various difficulties which will really test your skills at management.

Aside from adding nice new graphics and a new faction (nationalists) and resource (oil), gameplay is pretty much the same as the original. This is a good thing, though the designers have eliminated much frustration by letting you lay down paved roads allowing your little tropicans to drive to work, which makes moving resources from the farms and factories to the docks much quicker, and eliminating the need for you construction crews to flatten terrain, which speeds up construction (especially that damned airport) enormously.

Portal: Over the weekend Valve updated the files for this game, adding new achievement which involves hunting for radios that have been hidden in the test chambers, which when located emit brief Morse code signals. Gamers being the obsessive bastards they are, they've already decoded the message, which appears to be setting things up for either Portal 2 or Half-Life 2, Episode 3, both of which have been in danger of approaching vaporware status.

I"m a trifle ambivalent about the whole update. Great viral advertising I guess, but it's a bit jarring given the game has stayed static since its release, and that damned salsa version of the theme song gets annoying after a while.