Malik
(6/3//04)
For
Those Who Like Playing Evil Characters As
first brought to my attention by MSNBC.com,
it looks like Ubisoft is trying their luck with a slightly out of
the norm game genre. Ubisoft plans to bring the American
audience, sometime mid-summer (2004), a game based on the
presidential campaign of Bush vs. Kerry. The Political
Machine, as this game is called, will allow players to control the
campaigns of Bush, Kerry, a custom made candidate, or select
historical politicians, such as Reagan. This will allow you to
participate on reality based (but not quite real) news programs like
"60 Seconds", to choose a running mate, or take part in
debates. On
an interesting side-note, the people at Ubisoft have tried out the
game with the current politicians acting as they have been acting
for the last...damn, how long has this awful excuse for a
presidential campaign gone on...well, too many months, and found
that Bush will (in theory...The Political Machine's theory) go down
in flames. Considering
this game is being brought to us by Ubisoft, the masters who brought
us Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, and my old flame, Beyond Good
and Evil, I think they have the best chance of any company to bring
us something so different as The Political Machine. It sounds
like they've been putting a lot of time and effort into this venture
(they had this game planned for the 2000 presidential elections), so
there is some promise. I
just have the concern that with how the campaign season has been
going (I don't like to endorse or condemn any political beliefs and
I like to remain neutral in these matters when I voice my
opinion...but Kerry and Bush are about the most idiotic candidates
we Americans have seen as the front-liners for...well, probably
forever), no one is going to care, even if the game is actually
good. Maybe, considering how close the campaigning is this
year, this is the ideal time for such an innovative strategy
game, but close candidates and interesting candidates are two very
different things altogether. By the way, I said innovative
because I actually played this game during the 1988 elections on my Commodore
64 (called "Campaign Manager"). However, since this
genre has not been seen in a mainstream method like Ubisoft is
presenting it, I guess one can call it innovative. Even though
I doubt I'd ever buy (or even try) The Political Machine, I can't
help but hope for Ubisoft to succeed just because they have been
doing so damned good in the last year or two. I
guess this is the perfect game for people who like strategy elements
and like to play the slightly less than moral characters (maybe
Tommy Verceti can run for president as a custom character...maybe
The Political Machine will be worth a rental).
Malik
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