Oval Office Strategy Game Review and Game Download
Game Review by Joe Chin
Game Rating = 3/5 Balls
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Positech Games has made some interesting simulation games in only two years of operation. It’s therefore somewhat puzzling that they would make Oval Office and then license it to Zero G Games. Unlike its predecessor, the critically-acclaimed political simulator Democracy 2, Oval Office only allows you to run the United States while offering only minor cosmetic changes. Its developer has even admitted on his own forums that “If you are here, and reading this, and you liked the OO [Oval Office] demo, you might as well buy Democracy 2.” Is it still a good game? Yes. Is it worth buying at a three dollar discount? Not really.
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The game puts you in charge of the Republican party by default, but you can change it or the opposition party to anything from the Democratic party to the People’s Liberation party. After the game finishes loading (and showing you one of its many interesting political quotations), you’re presented with a fairly realistic projection of America after the 2008 elections: There’s a large debt, heavy pollution, hospital overcrowding, and most voters hate your party. Your job is to change all that, or at least get re-elected. You’re also inundated with more buttons than an airplane cockpit. The display is divided into two sections: The inner grid containing voter demographics, and a pie chart with tons of issues and policies. Everything in the display is connected somehow, and each policy must be fine-tuned so that all of them annoy the public as little as possible. If you don’t have enough support by the elections, you’re forced out of office.
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While the intricate connections of all the issues and policies result in an incredibly detailed simulation of how policies affect voters and issues, the presentation is very sparse and heavily lacks in polish. The primary screen looks okay, but all the icons look randomly thrown onto their respective areas, resulting in a sloppy look. The policy screens require going to the upper-right corner and clicking the X button to get out of, when an “Enact” or “Cancel” button might have been less awkward. Some well-rendered representations of voters appear in the Focus Group, but that’s the height of Oval Office’s special effects. The audio is a bit better, with suitably presidential-sounding music and sound effects that don’t grate on the ears.
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Despite the questionable marketing tactics, Oval Office is as playable as its full-featured counterpart. While it has a steep learning curve and a dry presentation, it’s also quite compelling to see how your policies affect the country. But be warned: It neither has the flexibility nor the patch support of Democracy 2. Because of this, while I give Oval Office a 3 out of 5 for gameplay that will glue you to your monitor if you can stomach the bland visuals, I don’t recommend buying it. As the developer suggests, try the demo, but buy Democracy 2 instead.
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System Requirements
OS: Windows 98 Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows Me
Memory: 256 MB
DirectX: 8.1 or later
CPU: P 1.2GHz
Video: 16MB Video Card
Zero G Games published Oval Office.
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