Review by: Mitch Dyer

Porting PC strategy games to consoles is always a risky process. City building sims are an especially tricky business because they’re so heavily reliant on complex menus, build orders and organization. A mouse is a comfortable tool for quickly navigating, while a controller, well, isn’t. Really, the control pad is Tropico 3’s only major downfall on the Xbox 360. If we pretend the terrible controls aren’t there, it’s a spectacular strategy game.

The controls are there, though. I have to press three buttons to select the structure I want to build. I have to use the bumpers and the d-pad to navigate different menus within a menu. On a PC, I can just click on what I want to do. It’s complicated, clunky and cumbersome on a console.

As awkward as it is to issue edicts to the people – whether you want to wiretap their phones to suppress political uprisings, experiment with nuclear tech or pick away at pollution problems – I still love Tropico 3. The widespread options in the game are available, even if they’re not the easiest to navigate, and it lets me dig into what is one of my new fixes.

The core game is simple, yet it yields a surprising amount of strategic depth: create a dictator, or choose from famous others (Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, etc.), and reign supreme. Tropico’s tropical islands each offer different objectives, like remaining in power until a certain year, or exporting a given number of resources. This mixes up your approach to leadership at each turn since you skip over to the next island when you’ve expanded and stabilized your current one. Keeping your economy up requires a delicate balance of producing revenue in corn or an influx of tourism. It also provides a challenge unlike anything else on Xbox 360.

Once you get a grip on the controls you’ll be zipping across your island, importing immigrants, rigging elections, educating the workers, amassing an army and suppressing revolts like a tyrannical champion. The number of abilities at your disposal is initially daunting, but that wavers with experience. It’s tough not to feel giddy when you lie about a llama infection for financial aid, force religion upon the masses and assassinate political opposition.