Seven Oaks Magazine.

The computer gaming scene is generally not very diverse. Every year, the
industry produces another batch of remarkably similar first person shooters
(FPS), real time strategy (RTS), and role playing games (RPG). New games are
made essentially for the same old customers, but every so often a game is
made that can appeal to a group from a slightly different demographic. The
latest games by 80soft, President Forever and Prime Minister Forever will
most likely be ignored by the hardcore gaming community, who would be
confused by abbreviations like GOP or NDP, but they should catch the
attention of the equally nerdy political junkie community.

President Forever allows you to play out the 2004 US election by taking
control of either George Bush's campaign or his opponents'. Trying to guide
Bush to another four years in Washington may sound less fun than a trip to
the dentist, but the game's real appeal, to most of the world's population,
will come from trying to send Bush back to Texas. The game allows you to
guide the Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards through a
seven-week campaign that includes rallies, fundraisers, ad campaigns,
speeches, debates, and spinning newspaper stories. The basics of the game
are fairly easy to learn, but what makes it interesting is that you have
only limited resources and have to pick the most effective ways to campaign
each turn. Each election campaign takes only about 30 minutes, which makes
the game good for a short break and allows you to try different strategies
each time to see if you can achieve better results.

One of the most amusing features of the game is the ability to change the
presidential candidates, giving you the choice of nine preprogrammed choices
for the Democrats and a candidate editor so that you can create more. This
option allows gamers to spend late nights putting candidates like Al
Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich into the White House, hoping that the game
results will somehow translate into the real world. The candidate editor
gives you the amusing ability to put yourself in the game by loading in your
picture.

The game also allows you to change the parties' platforms on 18 issues
ranging from Military Intervention to Public Health Care. There are five
possible positions on each issue ranging from left to right, with each
position giving you a public opinion bonus or penalty of either -2, -1, 0,
or +1, depending on how popular that position is in a particular state. The
game has a few flaws in the platform area, one being that the Republicans
have been mistakenly programmed as supporting an amnesty on illegal
immigrants.

If eventually you should tire of battling Bush Jr. in the 2004 election, you
can load one of the three historical scenarios included in the game. This
allows you to replay the classic election battles of 1992 (Bush Sr. vs.
Clinton), 1980 (Reagan vs. Carter), or 1960 (Nixon vs. Kennedy). True gaming
nerds with time on their hands can tackle the task of creating their own
scenarios and have them posted on the game's website. The electoral
scenarios vary in both quality and setting, starting as far back as the 1800
U.S. election and going as far into the future as the 2148 solar system
elections.

Prime Minister Forever takes the action and excitement of the recently
completed 2004 Canadian election and fits it all into a handy desktop
window. The importance of the game playing in a desktop window should not be
overlooked as it allows you to easily jump to other important tasks, like reading
online magazines and sending instant messages. The Canadian version handles
and looks very similar to President Forever, and there is the occasional
inappropriate use of the words President and State which reveals it to be a
quickly made spin-off of the US game.

The game was released on June 18, just ten days before the actual election
took place, and it seems the developers didn't put adequate time into setting
up the party platforms or accounting for some of the differences in public
opinion between Canada and the US. The game rates the Conservatives as
having the most popular positions on same-sex marriage and abortion despite
the evidence from the real electoral campaign, where Harper and company were
constantly trying to control the damage caused by their positions on these
issues.

The actual strategy and play in Prime Minister Forever is somewhat different
since the electoral systems are quite different. Canada's parliamentary
system makes a more strategically complicated and interesting game than
President Forever. The balance between the Canadian parties in 2004 also
makes the game more interesting, since all four parties included in the game
can win seats and a minority government is a very likely outcome. In Prime
Minister Forever each of Canada's 308 ridings is included and they can be
individually targeted and visited by the Party leaders. You can focus your
efforts on any particular riding, giving an opportunity to try and defeat
any particular candidate who you might happen to hate, like, say Ujjal
Dosanjh or Stockwell Day for instance.

A serious omission in Prime Minister Forever is that the Green Party is not
included. The Green Party got 4.3% of the vote and played a significant role
in getting many Conservatives and Liberals elected. President Forever
includes Ralph Nader's Independent campaign and the Libertarian Party, both
of which are far less important than Canada's Green Party. The developers
might have decided to skip the Greens simply to save the time of including
their candidates in each of the 308 ridings.

The game's developers have yet to release any updates for Prime Minister
Forever, while President Forever is already up to version 1.15.5, and more
updates have been promised including the addition of primaries. For these
games to have lasting success some significant features need to be added in
future updates, like an online multi-player mode (hotseat was never a good
way to play anything) and a real scenario editor (something more user
friendly than wordpad). The games are available from www.80soft.com, the
demos are free but limit you to a few weeks of the campaign, and the full
versions can be purchased for 15$ CAN each.