gorocco's Full Review: The Political Machine for Windows
The 2004 elections are long over, but a lot of questions linger after the polls closed. OK, there are not a lot of unanswered questions lying about, but UbiSoft's The Political Machine lets you play through a bunch of "what if" scenarios for the elections campaign. Questions such as "What if Hiliary Clinton got the nod from the Democrats?" or "What if Colin Powell ran along side Dubya as vice presidential candidate?" can be resolved with this elegant, overly simplified, computerized board game.
The race to the White House begins with the selection of your party and their candidate for president. Each candidate is characterized by stats such as fund raising ability, overall charisma, and stamina. The game tracks your progress in the forty-one weeks prior to Election Day, with each week counting as one turn. During each turn, you can elect to do a number of actions to help further your cause, limited only by your candidate's stamina and treasury. You can build campaign headquarters in states, take part in campaign fund raisers, create positive ads, or engage in a smear campaign of your opponent. As you progress through the game, you can take part in televised interviews that hit the key issues such the War on Terror and the environment, lobby for national endorsements for influential organizations, and hire specialists. Specialists come is all sorts of flavors, including the webmaster who helps defray the cost of ads in a state.
Your goal is to win enough of the electoral votes to guarantee your ticket to the White House. In the end, your success will be determined by how well you play up to the key issues in each state and how well you carry your opponent's name through the mud. The game provides you with easy to read tables that highlight the overall voters' opinions and how you may influence them.
Most of the action takes place on a game board that depicts, naturally enough, the U.S. As you play, tiny icons representing the candidates, their specialists, advertisements, and campaign HQs will litter the screen. It can get hard to read, especially in the small states along the Northeast.
The Political Machine uses a simple, cartoony art style throughout. The broad strokes and vibrant colors make the candidates appear more like the animated Colonel in Kentucky Fried Chicken ads. As basic as it is, the art direction works for this game, especially in highlighting some of the absurdities that make up a presidential campaign. It also takes away the seriousness behind such a campaign. After all, this is not a hard core simulation; it is a board game designed to help pass the time. Unfortunately, the game also lacks the pizzazz of today's games. The biggest letdown comes on election day. You would expect something special when you win; alas, all you get a big still shot.
The audio department is a complete let down. Some drone elevator musak plays in the background. Meager sound effects riddle the game. Overall, I had to turn off the volume. CNN makes for better background noise.
While the game can be fun in short bursts, it is riddled with flaws. Most grievous is the lack of balance. The optimal presidential candidate will have his or her stamina and fund raising stats maxed out to get the most movement points per turn and the most cash to spend. Choosing a candidate with little stamina but angelic charisma is a kiss of death. The single player game always has you chasing your opponent since the computer always goes first during the turn. Thus, any random specials that pop up are almost always taken before you get a chance to breathe.
The simple workings also make the game horribly tedious, especially as most turns are spent flying from one state to another launching the same ads over and over again. While there are options to randomize the polls on important issues in each state, the same topics tend to headline the polls across the nation. The game offers a quick play mode (i.e. one election) and a campaign mode that pits you against a series of political figures from both past and present. Given how repetitious one game is, it is hard to fathom going through ten election runs.
In the end, The Political Machine is a fun little distraction. The mechanics are simple enough to pick up. The strategic elements don't tax the ol' noggin too much. For a $19.99 game, it's not a bad deal, just don't expect too much on the campaign trail.
Become a campaign manager to lead your candidate's race for the White House Take on all the hot issues of the 2004 elections, including tax cuts, the ...More at Amazon
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