Casual Review #1 - Campaign

Welcome,
This is the first episode of a series I'm starting. I will be reviewing the last and greatest (or not) in casual gaming (mostly online).

In this episode I'll be reviewing Campaign:


Welcome to the 2008 US election season, we have controversial statements, flayers all over the US, and a lot of taking and showing the candidates. But don't YOU want a piece of the action? Always wanted to beat your opponent to the ground? Well now you can.. literally.

Do you really want to micromanage taxes and relevant issues or do you want to bitch slap your enemy around till he surrenders? As we all know, politics is a lot of back stabbing, cheating, attacking each other and doing anything to win. In preparation for the US election season comes a new game that takes the "politic" side of the hole thing to show you what really happens in the back stage of the political campaign. You may call it raw politics. I call it Campaign, by the guys over at THUP.

This is an online game, both multiplayer and singleplayer, that brings all those other political games to their knees. You start by choosing a candidate (out of the 6 running right now) and 3 asskicking assistants. You have the SPINMIESTER that will bring dirt on the enemy better than the typical "celebrity going crazy" tabloaid writer. You have the HATCHET MAN that will hack your way to presidancy. FUNDRAISER - the capitalizem in 1 human - will solve all your pains with a little injection of cash. And the OPERATIVE - who will hide in the shadows and strike the behind (mostly the lower part).


In the core, this is a very lite tern based strategy game. You have to capture lands to get money, but the goal is to "kill" the enemy candidate. So the balancing work isn't obvious - do you go for the lands and ignore the enemy, or do you run towards the enemy and hope he dies fast? In the online gameplay I tested a few strategies. On one game, we were both going for lands only and it came to a situation that we are 1 squere apart but still none of us attacks the other.

The muliplayer mode is mostly fun. But i have to warn you, it's very bugy. It takes a hole lot to connect, and the bugs just start there. The game clock stops suddenly, resets itself to a different time, come to 0 and just stops. Part of my games ended by me getting frustrated and just closing the window, but the rest, were real fun. You get tested every game, you can't use the same moves to win, so you will need to be flexible and think a bit before making a move.

So the game in itself is quite good, both the single and multi modes. If it had a bit more things to do and a lot less buggy multiplayer it would probably get around the uper nines.



Enjoy,
kost.