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itt I slam positech games
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Positech is a one man company run by an ex lionhead guy. He makes odd little sim games and I spent thirty bucks buying some of them and wrote some things about them here they are
Democracy
Democracy is a game in which you play the ruler (yay) of a democratic (boo!) nation. You set taxes and policies and things like that and try and make the world a more best place.
I started up this game and became bored almost instantly, but on proceeding (past the game crashing roughly every three turns) I found that it's actually pretty interesting.
Sort of
The problem is this. There are many, many factors in the game that can be tinkered with to your hearts content to please various voters. The issue being that one portion, middle income, can't be affected by anything except dropping income tax, which you can never afford to do to a sufficient extent that it will placate them (even if basically removed completely) and they make up 40% of the voting populace. Another healthy chunk of the populace, capitalists, can only be placated by basically abolishing tax.
The game also runs (understandably) completely on stereotypes, which is slightly annoying in that all the "religious" voters are screaming fundamentalist scumbags who can only be placated by creationism being taught in schools and policies mandating that every third child in the country be called Jesus. My first game resulted in me being a ruler beloved by all and prompty getting shot by the religious right for funding stem cell research.
The other problem is that the really interesting policies don't actually work. The only way to succeed in the game is to be very boring and gradually tinker with things and try not to upset anyone too much. My attempts to create a police superstate with spy sattelites and the death penalty for basically everything fell completely flat, whereas history has taught us that actually fascist states work rather well. I'm pretty sure that the developer is a dirty, bum swilling liberal based on the fact that success in the game is dependant on everyone being like, nicer to each other, yeah?
The game also isn't coded terribly well. There are plenty of grammatical errors, the interface has some tedious eccentricities (you have two moves. making a policy and adjusting its parameters counts as both moves. This is stupid. policy effects also can't be seen until the policy is carried out. this is stupid). For example, is getting two smiley faces for pollution good? no. that means your pollution stat has gone up and that you are a gaylord. There are also frequent messages like "patriot support for you has gone up because TERRORIST STRIKE" when in fact said strike made support go DOWN and my subsequent actions made support go back up. Confusing eh?
There's also no way to abolish elections, which is of course the first thing that any self respecting politician does when they get into power. I lost my second election despite eliminating national debt AND crime, because I didn't keep my election promise to drop pollution or something. This is stupid.
Positech is a one man company run by an ex lionhead guy. He makes odd little sim games and I spent thirty bucks buying some of them and wrote some things about them here they are
Democracy
Democracy is a game in which you play the ruler (yay) of a democratic (boo!) nation. You set taxes and policies and things like that and try and make the world a more best place.
I started up this game and became bored almost instantly, but on proceeding (past the game crashing roughly every three turns) I found that it's actually pretty interesting.
Sort of
The problem is this. There are many, many factors in the game that can be tinkered with to your hearts content to please various voters. The issue being that one portion, middle income, can't be affected by anything except dropping income tax, which you can never afford to do to a sufficient extent that it will placate them (even if basically removed completely) and they make up 40% of the voting populace. Another healthy chunk of the populace, capitalists, can only be placated by basically abolishing tax.
The game also runs (understandably) completely on stereotypes, which is slightly annoying in that all the "religious" voters are screaming fundamentalist scumbags who can only be placated by creationism being taught in schools and policies mandating that every third child in the country be called Jesus. My first game resulted in me being a ruler beloved by all and prompty getting shot by the religious right for funding stem cell research.
The other problem is that the really interesting policies don't actually work. The only way to succeed in the game is to be very boring and gradually tinker with things and try not to upset anyone too much. My attempts to create a police superstate with spy sattelites and the death penalty for basically everything fell completely flat, whereas history has taught us that actually fascist states work rather well. I'm pretty sure that the developer is a dirty, bum swilling liberal based on the fact that success in the game is dependant on everyone being like, nicer to each other, yeah?
The game also isn't coded terribly well. There are plenty of grammatical errors, the interface has some tedious eccentricities (you have two moves. making a policy and adjusting its parameters counts as both moves. This is stupid. policy effects also can't be seen until the policy is carried out. this is stupid). For example, is getting two smiley faces for pollution good? no. that means your pollution stat has gone up and that you are a gaylord. There are also frequent messages like "patriot support for you has gone up because TERRORIST STRIKE" when in fact said strike made support go DOWN and my subsequent actions made support go back up. Confusing eh?
There's also no way to abolish elections, which is of course the first thing that any self respecting politician does when they get into power. I lost my second election despite eliminating national debt AND crime, because I didn't keep my election promise to drop pollution or something. This is stupid.
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The great question hangs in the air: will he take it as constructive feedback or is there a meltdown coming?
/popcorn
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Hmm, been playing so many Gov sim games, I might have gotten them confused. Please hold. Doo dee doo da da doo.
Edit 2- Hah, yep I did. Sovereign 2020 is the game I have been recently playing. I do have the Demo for Democracy 2 installed. . . seems I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
I maintain there should be more fun stuff in the game. Once I'd instituted the death penalty for everything, armed the police with machine guns and tapped every phone in the country I found there wasn't really any other fun stuff to implement. I want to restrict the press! I want public executions! Let me do bad things Cliff! For Pete's sake!
Also you know what? This is actually a pretty fun game and it's the best of his games. I'd recommend it to people that like this sort of thing except it's overpriced. Quite badly.
so basically your prototypical third-world dictatorship, minus possibly abundant natural resources?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
yes except it's the united states
in fact my new game as the US (who start out fucked) ended with me getting reelected at the end of my first term with 98%, and as of my sixth term or whatever it is 80% of the country are now, you guessed it, farmers.
I CONQUER at democracy.
Kudos/Kudos Rock Legends
Kudos
Kudos Rock Legends on the other hand
Kudos is a "life sim" game, like the sims if it were a text adventure and not fun. You get ten years (grr time limit, shame on you) to fuck around making friends and working and getting better jobs and etc. It's a pretty simple concept and you've all played the sims so here is a list of the things wrong with it
Skill Grinding
A big part of the career part of the game is going to night courses, which is actually pretty cool because there's lots of things to do and it's satisfying getting the different qualifications, because they don't erode with time. Other parts of the game require you to raise your "IQ" and "Culture" skils, in order to get better jobs and in many cases make new friends. People who are smarter than you or more cultured won't want to hang out with you because you're terrible. This means you have to grind up your IQ by say, playing sudoku. Over and over again. Then you'll max out the logic part of IQ, and have to grind up knowledge by reading a book. Over and over and over again. While your logic skill fades away, so you play more sudoku. There are FIVE IQ STATS. Imagine how tedious this becomes, and then bear in mind that there are five culture stats as well. A large part of the game becomes grinding up your stupid stats while desperately trying to hold onto your stupid friends. Sooner or later, the game bugs out and prospective friends get IQ or culture scores over 100, making them impossible to befriend. I looked on the game board and this is a known bug that hasn't been fixed, so I can only assume cliff is a homophobe and a trade unionist.
Awful Friend System
Friends in this game suck ass. If you want a career (and you do, because cash flow is a permanent problem for most of the game) you will have to neglect your friends. If you cancel on a friend ONCE, they will often dissappear and there is no way of contacting them again. This is deeply tedious, and they will also do this if you don't go out with them because you can't afford it, because your job sucks. You will rarely be able to afford to go out, because jobs give you shit all money and most of your income will go on night classes to get a better job. towards the end game you can afford to go out more, but by this point the focus of the game becomes grinding your stupid skills to make more buddies.
Careers
Another big part of the game. There's a certain satisfaction in climbing the careers ladder, but all of the careers are pretty much alike. No information is really given about your day other than that you arrived "bored and tired" or "bored and stressed" to work (this appears to be bugged). Promotions get you more money and that's it, so it feels like there's an essential part of the reward mechanism missing. A lot of the fun in The Sims was in the little messages you would get on promotion, and the events that would happen at work. Not here. There's also no noticeable difference between different career branches. There's no reason to be a human rights lawyer rather than a corporate lawyer, because one pays more than the other and there aren't any real differences apart from that. Gas pumpers work the same hours as senior partners by the way. Since there's no credit system in the game, you need a very good job in order to buy any neat stuff, so taking any "cool" jobs over being a lawyer or doctor leads to poverty and liberalism. I actually switched careers from law (which I reached the top of) to medicine to see if there was any difference in careers. There isn't.
Regrettable Design Decisions
Remember how I said there's no credit? Right. So you can't buy a computer until you have the money in your pocket to buy it. This can take an AGE, even if you're on a good career track, because all your money goes to night classes and possibly going out with your stupid ugly friends.
Some goods have a daily cost. If you can't pay this daily cost, because there's no debt system, it gets sold. The game seems to pick something at random to sell. One day, despite having a great job and being solvent, I bought something that meant I had a lower cash flow for the day, so the game elected to sell my car which costs a fortune in game money without giving me any choice in the matter.
Until you buy a computer (which trust me, is VERY far into the game) you can only go shopping on the weekends. No explanation is ever given for this. Here is a fun side effect of this; if you buy a dog, and you run out of food on monday (or can't afford the food on the weekend because of course, you make no money on the weekend since lawyers and doctors are paid cash in hand on a day to day basis) your dog is dead. That's it. Even though might have the money to feed him on tuesday, you can't go shopping under any circumstances until the weekend, and your dog will die in that time. Since there is no in game balance sheet and the methods that game uses for determining your income are arcane, this will happen to you at some point. A dog is compulsory by the way, because without it your house will be burgled about once every two weeks, and the burglar alarm is ridiculously unaffordable. Oh, and if you don't take kickboxing lessons you'll regularly get the shit kicked out of you and have your money taken.
Look I can't even remember how many different ways this game sucks but trust me it does. I wasn't even trying to hate it but it sucks fucking balls and no one should ever play it. Play Democracy instead, it is ten times more best.
My hands are tired from typing so I will do the rock legend critique tomorrow maybe. Here is a quick synopsis: rock legend is great and cliff if you take that fucking practise minigame out of it it will be about thirty percent better because whose fucking idea was that seriously.
so I'll do a critique of that game still but get it in the mean time because it's great
Maybe they're gold farmers.
Democracy 2 costs $23.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Well, screw that then. Too rich for my blood.
I think these games are pretty much worth five pounds each. There are simply a lot better games out there for ten pounds.
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