"The Political Machine"

"The Political Machine" is a simplistic simulation of the real political world. You simply oppose or are in favor of the issues, without touching upon issues where you would need to make a game plan (such as how would you stimulate the economy). The gameplay becomes repetitive, after only a few hours of play.

Upon starting "The Political Machine" you'll need to choose one of four gameplay modes, Quick Play, Campaign, Fantasy, and multiplayer. The campaign mode requires you to win against a series of other candidates. Quick play is just what it implies. Let's you pick a character and your opponent, and then get to the campaign.

The game screen is a map of the United States. There are multiple modes you can use to view the map. You can look by awareness level or see if you have the popular vote in which states. You can zoom in and out as you want, although there isn't much point, other than to see the characters a little closer.

To raise awareness and gain popularity among the voters, you'll travel from state to state giving speeches, raising funds, running ads, and trying to gain the support of special interest parties. That's pretty much it to the gameplay. You'll either oppose or favor issues, and let the voters know where you stand. Each state will give you statistics on the feelings of the voters, so you know if favoring or opposing an issue will hurt your ratings. If your views do oppose the majority of the state, then you can simply not talk about that subject.

The process of campaigning becomes repetitive and offers very little replayability. At times it seems you can do the very worst and still get good ratings. It's not a complex simulator, but is interesting enough to try to the demo.