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Tropico 4 tasks you with building a settlement on an island, gathering resources and maintaining your grasp on the populace.

To advance through each level; of which there are 20, you need to complete a number of tasks to achieve a particular final goal. There's plenty of variety in these missions, and you can see why when you boot up the comprehensive challenge editor. Needless to say, winning levels is more than just gathering so many resources.

It is a bit of a drag how you have to start each mission from the beginning. As such, missions begin with about half an hour of placing down clinics and churches and placating the communists before you can get to the interesting stuff of going through those missions. They won't dissapoint - for example, in one, you have to host the olympics.

You can run your island as a benevolent ruler or a tyrant by enacting laws, denying/permitting elections and executing/arresting your opponents or having a free press.

Recommended.

Action-Adventure game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto where you take on the role of a fully customisable (even after creation) gangster who is plopped into a city (an admittably small city) and left to create large amounts of havok.

Obviously, there is a story as well, but even after completing it, you are free to do what you want.

Speaking of the story mode, many of the missions tend to be based around the activities you can already do across the city (i.e; transport 4 hos to a bordello) which is a bit dissapointing.

Nevertheless, the production values (voices, graphics, presentation and writing) more than make up for it.

Way too much DLC (most of which is inconsequential clothes and vehicles packs, which can be safely ignored unless you like giving THQ money), but otherwise an enjoyable game with lots to aim for (83 steam achievements that tie in with the in-game achievements) and plenty of scope for replaying as a different personality.

My favourite SimCity game of them all (and they are all so good), simply because of its depth. Plan city sized commercial districts to feed residential and industrial sectors respectively, or build small villages across a region area that you (with a lot of donkey work, it must be said) can design yourself.

As in some other SimCities, you'll plan neighbourhoods, fund services, enact policies and balance a budget to build a working city.

With a mix of strategy and RPG, create a hero, form an army then watch hopelessly as the opposing forces tear through them, killing almost all of them.

Once you get the hang of it, you learn to pick your battles, and you too could whizz past a viking on your horse and clobber him 'round the head. with a wooden club

Fun, but quite fiddly and very unforgiving.

Tricky in places, but an otherwise compelling and very charming management sim/Action RPG game.