Tropico 5 is like crack for your PS4

Multiplayer impressions coming soon

I’m a sucker for city-building and Civ-like games. Since the very early days of SimCity and SimTower, I’ve poured countless hours into building my virtual communities and empires. With Tropico 5 now ported over to the PlayStation 4, that sim addiction is even more accessible.

The game is challenging and surprisingly deep for a console game of this nature. For those who played Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution on the PlayStation 3, you know first-hand how a traditional PC port can be significantly gutted for its console brethren.

With Tropico 5 on the PS4, you can get just as deep an experience as you would want on PC. While it could use some tweaks to its balance and resource management (for example, the power plants and the related power needs of various buildings), the game isn’t without its challenges and willingness to teach you the hard way how to properly rule an island empire.

Best of all, there is a sandbox mode where you can really experiment. Among other things, you can adjust your difficulty settings and win requirements. The UI is well-suited for the console. The placement of roads can be tricky, but once you start playing more, you become accustomed to their occasional stubbornness to not go perfectly straight when you want them to.

Because the game comes out Tuesday, I was not able to test out multiplayer, but that is a huge feature. I’ll be getting you those impressions in the coming days for the full review. But for what it is, Tropico 5 on the PS4 is a sim-lover’s dream that appears to be worth it for console owners looking for a serviceable empire-building game.