It might surprise you to know, but I have to confess; I haven’t been playing Modern Warfare 2 non-stop since the day I bought it. Yes, my review stated that it was a fantastic game that everyone should buy, and would keep you entertained for hours and hours. But somehow I find myself drawn to play something else. Which is pretty much why I checked out the Tropico 3 demo that just came out.Tropico 3 is, I’m assuming, the third in a series of games that share the same name of “Tropico”. To be honest, I’ve never heard of the series before, but hey, if it’s hit a third game then someone out there must be buying it. The general story behind it is that you’re El Presidente of a series of small islands, and you have to build buildings, export exports and keep your residents happy, while at the same time putting some money aside for your eventual retirement. It’s all quite tongue in cheek, poking fun at communism and capitalism as it goes.

You play it in the standard god game perspective, i.e. straight down from high above, watching your busy little people go about their day. The controls are simple enough, and the tutorial is informative enough to give you the basic actions before sending you on your way. Actually, the tutorial is actually pretty annoying, because as well as being extremely dull it also manages to not give you any real indication of what to do in the main game. As it happens, you get given an objective before you get given an island, and from there you can try and achieve that objective.

The problem is that… well… it’s boring. The tutorial lets you know that crops take about 3 years to start growing, so you’re stuck just watching your people run around doing nothing while the game fast forwards to a point where something happens. During this time, the happiness of my people dropped steadily, because apparently I wasn’t doing anything for them, although the game left me in the dark about this until they started to peacefully protest. They still hated me even when crops started growing. Some more indication would be nice; after all, it’s not like your smoke detector doesn’t go off until after your house has burnt down.

Graphically the game isn’t going to set the world on fire, which makes the opening sequence odd, seeing as it shows off the lack of animation in the residents of the island. It makes sense really that they didn’t put much effort into it, since you’ll be looking at the landscape from above all the time anyway, and there’s no need to go down to street level. Still, a bit of effort would be nice.

The sound basically consists of Mediterranean music playing over and over, sometimes interrupted by a man with the worst Cuban accent ever heard. The islanders say stuff sometimes, but it’s mostly just mumbling, since they’re not exactly having in-depth conversations with each other to keep the storyline going. All the sounds make it seem more real, but don’t exactly make an impact on it.

All in all, I guess you could do worse with a god game, but you can certainly do a hell of a lot better. Then again, there aren’t many available for the 360, so perhaps it’s worth a look if you like this kinda thing. It can’t hurt to download the demo though, eh?

Tropico 3 is already out on the PC, but if you’re looking for it on the 360, you’ll have to wait until the 2nd of February next year.