SuperPower 2 Review

More comic relief than serious geopolitical simulation, the original SuperPower wasn't big on realism. While the ambition of the game design gave it a certain charm, everything was skewed with such a bizarre take on foreign affairs that almost anything was possible. If you were looking for a thoughtful take on the international community of nations, you came away disappointed. If you were looking for a game that finally let you see what would happen if Belgium invaded Sri Lanka, you came away thrilled. Things are a little better in the sequel, but not by much. While SuperPower 2 tones down the outrageous stuff somewhat, there are still so many strange incidents that it's impossible to keep from laughing out loud at least once per game. And there still isn't enough to do. Scenarios can be successfully completed by making just a couple of minor adjustments to the default setup and then waiting for time to pass. If running a nation in the real world were this easy, the planet would be a paradise.

Germany's up to her old tricks again...but in India?

Gameplay at least seems impressive, with a selection of single-player scenarios and a custom mode that can be played alone or with up to 32 opponents via the Internet or a LAN. You can take control of any nation on the picturesque rotating globe (zoom in and you can even make out highways and rivers) and direct its three spheres of influence: political, economic, and military. Politically, you can outlaw religions, ban languages, and declare various forms of dictatorships, while in economics you get to play with commerce. The military sphere is perhaps the most interesting, however, as here you get to purchase and design jet fighters, tanks, and the other hardware required to attack neighbors. You can even direct forces on the battlefield using an abstract map to direct units, although the options are so limited that it makes more sense to let the computer automatically generate battle results.

This is actually quite appropriate, too, since much of the game flies on autopilot. In the intermediate military scenario, where the goal was the seemingly daunting task of developing nuclear weapons in Canada, we won simply by cranking up the tax rate to pay for the project and selecting the options necessary to research and deploy nuclear weapons. We just clicked on the buttons to build a missile defense system and strategic forces, and then designed and constructed ballistic missiles. The only hard part was waiting the 15 to 20 minutes needed for all the research to be completed.

Nothing else was required during that delay, save patience. Despite the momentous nature of what Canada was doing, nobody tried to stop the building of this massive nuclear arsenal. Washington didn't care about the deployment of nukes on its doorstep. Alliances actually strengthened over the four years it took to go nuclear. By the time the missiles were rolling off the assembly line, Canada was beloved from Azerbaijan to Zaire. Opinion was the same inside the country. Without even lifting a finger to appease the heavily taxed electorate, the ruling Liberals surged to 98 percent wins in two straight elections, government corruption dropped to an astounding zero percent, and gross domestic product per capita leaped to over $50,000 per year.

It seems like there's a lot going on, especially when you pull up the current events ticker, but there really isn't a lot to do here.

All of the other scenarios seem similarly automated. While you can influence nearly every aspect of your nation's foreign and domestic policy, there isn't much need to tinker. Yes, you can declare martial law in the US, set up a theocracy in the new capital of Wichita, and send covert operatives to stage a coup in Zambia, but there's no point to doing any of these outlandish things unless you want to make things hard for yourself.

Smaller, less radical steps, like signing economic treaties and forming common markets with other nations, have more of an obvious payoff, essentially making your people richer and happier. But since you can usually get where you're going without such experiments, why bother? Unless you absolutely need to build your economy through a series of treaties, as in the scenario where Turkey must raise its standard of living before being admitted to the European Union, nations advance in prosperity so naturally that you can just about sit back and enjoy the ride.