Capitalism 2

I am definately hooked and will assuredly get many hours of fun, challenge and mental exercise from this purchase.

Now the But - sorry, if not for the But, I would be giving this 5 stars.

The user interface is not very friendly. Players of SimCity will miss the various "views" which enable the player to see at a glance what is happening in the city. "Views are absent from this game and this causes a lot of player stress just keeping track of your own business interests, let alone those of the opposition.

Colour coding is essential, but, the huge coloured logos attached to buildings are not just hard on the eyes, but, they obsure other properties. Included in this gripe, there is no way to see behind these logos, or any large buildings, so that your own property can get lost in these blind spots. Players of SimCity will wonder where the view rotation is for seeing behind things, while Transport Tycoon fanatics would be satisfied if a simple transparent view had been provided. Transport Tycoon gives a good example of a better way to label property than the huge coloured logos in this.

The menues in all areas are very long winded and repeating an action several times, such as when purchasing technology can be very tedious indeed.

The manual, oh, how wonderful to have a manual in these days of print your own or manage with the help menues, would be excellent if only the company had added a simple table of contents and an index.

Property which has been demolished leaves behind an area of unusable land instead of making the land available for redevelopment. I am sure this is a bug and a fix is pending as huge tracts of the city can become complete wasteland in a few years.

And finally, and this may be because I still have a lot to learn, but there appear to be a number of quite significant bugs. (Well, this is issue 1.00 so some bugs are inevitable). For example, head office staff have no abilities at the start of the game, and, 30 years on, they have learned nothing - ouch.

Capitalism 2 will ease you in with some well designed tutorials to make you feel a little at home but, in all honesty, you'll probably have the game paused for the majority of the time just to study the many different menus and screens.

These menus cover everything. For instance, it's not just a matter of selling a product that you've lovingly crafted in your down town factory. You must choose a strategy like brand labelling and then advertise using the 3 media types modelled in the game.

Multiple cities and opponents can be customised as well as multiplayer options, all with a miriad of sub options to suit most tastes in difficulty.

So, if you're a budding Branson and fancy a REAL challenge, Capitalism 2 is for you but a word of warning: NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!!