Описание игры, скриншоты, видео

Политика - грязное дело, тем не менее туда лезут все и мрази и почтенные люди и артисты и спортсмены. А всё почему? - да потому что там можно нифига не делать, а тока трындеть, за что и получать кучу бабла и массу разных привилегий.
Это дело доступно и настоящим правильно живущим - игрокам в компьютерные игры.
Докажите, что в достижении своей цели любые средства хороши.

Всё пропало. Страна, славившаяся некогда своим богатством и могуществом, находится на пороге гражданской войны: промышленность в упадке, население нищенствует, верхи - бездействуют, пытаясь под шумок распродать всё, что пользуется хоть каким-нибудь спросом. Что делать? Правильно. Нужно брать: ситуацию - под контроль, а власть - в свои руки.
«Магнат политики» - тонкая, ироническая игра, дающая каждому возможность попробовать себя в роли главы целого государства. Огромная ответственность за судьбы целого народа ляжет на ваши плечи, ведь именно вы будете принимать экономические и политические решения, начинать войны и подписывать договоры о мире, заключать и расторгать союзы, назначать и снимать с должностей министров, отслеживать настроения простых людей и работать над своим имиджем, шпионить за конкурентами и пытаться сохранить в тайне собственные пороки - в общем, заниматься теми делами, которыми живёт любой видный общественный деятель.
Что бы там ни говорили, а миром правят деньги. И чтобы лишний раз в этом убедиться, настоятельно рекомендуем установить эту игру и стать ... Хозяином Мира! В этом что-то есть?!

Is there truly anything better in life than becoming rich, powerful, and toppling an entire nation? It'd be like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket of joy -- the sweet, sweet, evil, greed mongering, sinful kind of joy. Well, then wouldn't the transition of said nation toppling and cash hording over to the realm of gaming be as equally thrilling? You'd think so wouldn't you, yet here we are facing Political Tycoon, a snore fest that'll make even zombies groan in boredom and reel in agony. On the bright side, you'll discover that Political Tycoon poses no real threat to your daily allotment of time. You'll be able to work, sleep, eat, and engage in social activities without ever once thinking about getting back to the game at all!

At heart, Political Tycoon (Economic War internationally) is a rather complex (though not as much so as other titles of a similar nature) game of politics, trade relations, and financial management, set against a political cartoonish style.

Graphically, Political Tycoon is a full on political comic strip, where the people and buildings are overly and sometimes grossly exaggerated. The entire style of the game is quite a refreshing change of pace from the bland "realistic" sprite-based games of a similar nature. Its comical feel is light hearted and appreciable. The 1024x768 drawn graphics are all solid and well defined, though a lot of the building art make them somewhat hard to distinguish from one another, at least until you play the game enough that they become recognizable.

Entire nations are represented in the game via scaled down models featuring one main city filled with that country's landmarks and architectural style. These cities are surrounded by countryside where all of the pertinent resource gathering structures are located. While the 2D graphics are not by any means bad, they are also not at the technical level other games of a similar perspective have set (Sim City 3000, Age of Empires II, and so forth), but as mentioned, the artistic style is still refreshing. Unfortunately, the game has very little in the way of animation. Aside from scattered groups of "people" bobbing up and down simulating a riot on your streets, and the occasional changes in expression by your representative's face, the game is sparsely animated; even the buildings just instantaneously appear when placed, there's no brief construction or transition animation whatsoever.

A highlight of the game (because it causes your mind to wander) is the somber, narcolepsy inducing noises the PW makes. The entire title, for the most part, consists of practically zero audio. There'll be long stretches of time when you hear absolutely nothing. The little clicking noises the mouse makes are almost hypnotic in the way they absolutely make you not want to play anymore. Cities and forests have their own separate sounds; the city makes no sound, and the forest makes a lame "foresty" noise. Both suck, though the city's is preferable (even though it does have the occasional honking horn and riot noise). The rest of in-game sound is made up of little pings, voice alerts, annoying as all hell bells, and other blares of discomfort that occur whenever there is something of "significance" happening. Voices, at least in the cutscene are well acted and generally humorous; too bad during play they're virtually non-existent. I didn't even know there was music in the game aside from the opening cutscene until I went into the options field and saw that there was a slider tab for setting the volume. Wow! Got to respect the game that includes the slider for music when you can't even hear music during the game.

The entire mood of the game is set via a hilarious opening cutscene that sees the president of the United States in an unscrupulous under the table deal with a Saudi dignitary. The president is pretty much the culmination of all the worst aspects of both Reagan and George Bush Sr. (He even, at one point, needs a teleprompter sat right in front of him so that he can speak to the king.)

The single-player game is broken down into eight scenarios ranging in time periods and objectives from a 1950s arms race to a 2050s vaccine rush. You start the game by choosing your representative from a wealth of profiles, all of whom have no bearing on performance, but are instead offered up as a comical alter ego of yourself. Some people may find of the depictions of various races, ethnicities, and nations of the world to be stereotypical and even at times offensive, but I, being a rather open-minded jerk that I am, found the style to be funny and definitely in keeping with the general political parody of the title, so don't get mad if your race, nation, or whatever isn't headed up by the Mel Gibson of the political world.

The entire interface seems generally unresponsive (and yes I was using a mouse made outside of Antarctica). Sometimes a click simply won't activate the button being pressed, and other aspects of the game, such as dropping diplomats and spies, is so awkwardly implemented and cumbersome that it becomes a game in and of itself (albeit a crappy one of course). Just imagine carrying this large stupid guy that completely eliminates any indication of where the point to your pointer is, then place him on top of a small rectangular flag and click like a million times. Eventually one of them is bound to activate the thing. The interface problems are only compounded by the game's baffling requirement of having to close whatever window you're currently looking at in order to switch over to a different one. On paper, it appears to be an only minor inconvenience, but in practice, it becomes ridiculously frustrating, especially as you invest more and more time into the game.

Trading is handled by choosing the nation with which you'd like to barter for goods and then selecting a document icon. A window listing all of the available goods will appear and it will then be possible, by way of sliders, to set what type of deal you'd like to hammer out. This trade window often disappears totally at random. Sometimes a foreign nation will initiate a request for trade with you and when you attempt to view the specifics of the agreement the window will lock and your choices will diminish to either accepting whatever the hell it is the other nation is offering, or waiting and hoping that the window will randomly close, which it probably won't, unless you of course spend a great deal of time trying to tweak the deal. You'll unfortunately need to trade a lot too, as your nation will undoubtedly not be able to produce all of your populace's required goods (coal, sugar, cows, cheese, whatever).

See, you undoubtedly won't be able to produce all you require because these goods (resources) are harvested by placing structures on top of predefined areas marked on the main activity screen via wooden signs. What really sucks about all this is that you can only build the structures necessary to create resources in the aforementioned signed areas, though each sign will only allow for one structure, and even then only a certain type of structure. So, at the onset of the game it's already known exactly what you will and will not be able to build. What's worse is that some of the scenarios come preset with structures, so all of the areas where you could theoretically build stuff are already filled, though you can research and partner up with other nations to increase productivity. Still, what's up with that?

Maintaining a healthy relationship with other nations comes by supporting their motions (nations bring motions up either for themselves or for/against others that are voted on by all the nations in the game), sending ambassadors to them, and not nuking their civilization. Sadly, the AI doesn't fall under this same umbrella of logic. No, they are instead fuelled on inconsistency and irrational behavior. One minute my relationship with France was good and the next they were bombing me. Now, I can understand the inclusion of treachery into the AI routines (especially French AI), but to make them commit acts of stupidity that will clearly be the catalyst for their destruction is insane. So France bombed me, and to the best of my knowledge gained absolutely nothing from it. Well, that's not entirely true, because they did gain twenty of my bombs, just not in a good way. I then proceed to sabotage, corrupt, and scandalize their entire nation.

The entire game is plagued with this kind of illogical behavior. For instance, during the 1950's arms race it was my intention to focus all of my efforts on beating Russia (as that was pretty much what the arms race was all about). Sadly enough things were not going so well for little old me as my nation (in this case the US) was declining so rapidly that even Sodom and Gomorrah were starting to look like Avalon. Fortunately for me the game just suddenly ended because China had been defeated! Hooray! I didn't even know I was playing against China. In fact, the trance-like state the game put me in caused me to be completely oblivious to the fact that there was even a China playing in our scenario. Now that's what I call quality.

Political War has some interesting concepts in the genre of international relations gaming (whee), and while it's not the worst thing ever, it's also not remarkably good, snappy, swell, or even peachy. To the average gamer, Political War is, at best, a sure fire cure for insomnia, and at worst mediocre. I honestly can't see very many people getting into this product, but even the people who really like economic sims should be able to find a better representative for the genre than Political Tycoon, because its faults are too many, too often, to warrant a purchase.