The Political Machine

While a game about a presidential election is undoubtedly more interesting three months before the fact as opposed to three years, these kinds of games are usually either abstract strategy exercises with no basis in reality or dull political simulators interesting only to C-SPAN-watching insomniacs. The fact that The Political Machine manages to be both a reasonable facsimile of a presidential campaign and an absolutely absorbing strategy game that will keep you coming back for beating after beating is a testament to the design skills of a small developer called Stardock Entertainment, also responsible for last year��s excellent Galactic Civilizations.

The Political Machine succeeds primarily because it concentrates on being a good strategy game rather than a strict political simulator. The game gives you the freedom to choose how to run your campaign, using an elegant game system that provides you with a lot of options while ensuring that you��ll never be able to take advantage of them all��the basis of a successful strategy game.

Each campaign is divided into 41 turns, each representing a week. Candidates travel from state to state giving speeches; building organizations (headquarters); running radio, television, and print ads; and gaining endorsements from special-interest groups. The key is to frame the debate around issues where you agree with state or national opinion, while restricting the focus on areas where you��re weak. For example, in a state where your opponent is soft on crime, you might give speeches about fighting crime to raise awareness on this topic. If you��re weak on foreign-policy issues, you can get an endorsement from a foreign-policy think tank to bolster your position. While you��re doing this, though, you won��t be running ads or raising funds, because you only have so many action points to spend per week, and the choices are stark.

Character Issues

Candidates are rated in a number of characteristics, such as integrity, compassion, experience, credibility, and stamina. Some of these are easy to understand (stamina determines how many action points you��ll have each week), while some are more nebulous (such as media bias). Unfortunately, the character-creation system is a bit broken due to several characteristics (stamina, experience, and fund-raising ability��and to a lesser extent, starting money) being much more important than others. So creating your own characters for multiplayer isn��t as interesting as it could be, since the choices there are pretty obvious.

A political campaign would be nothing without dirty tricks, and The Political Machine gives you a whole arsenal of them. You can hire smear merchants to lower an opponent��s ratings in a state or use hecklers to increase their stamina cost��effectively giving them fewer actions in a turn. Some of the game��s random events give you advantages (which occasionally prove unbalancing), like less costly ads or celebrity support to help raise your awareness in different states.

While the timeliness of the topic definitely enhances the game��s appeal, the fundamental system would be interesting even if it were set on Mars. That��s the mark of a good design and a worthy purchase.

Verdictm * * * * 1/2

A great strategy game, even if you never watch the news.

PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: Stardock Entertainment GENRE: Political strategy ESRB RATING: T REQUIRED: 1GHz Pentium III, 256MB RAM, 64MB videocard, 750MB install, broadband Internet connection RECOMMENDED: 2GHz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM MULTIPLAYER: Internet (2 players); Solidifying the Base

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Computer Gaming World.