by Brad F.

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: August 17, 2008

The purpose of the Oval Office is to assume the role of the president and take charge of your country. Oval Office is touted to be the ultimate political strategy and simulation game in the market today. As the president of your own country, you will have to learn to balance the budgets, make sure all of the taxes are correct and not harmful to your new country. You are tasked with making quick judgments that may be harmful to your country or may lead your country to success. Some of the tough issues you will face will be dealing with crime and punishment as well as social order you are able to choose your government type so that you can be a democracy or a hardened dictator.

As I played trough the demo version of this game I found it to be based more on making choices than I had anticipated. The game starts off with a complex government screen that allows you to choose what you what to spend your initial money, like researching new technologies and it also allows you to change certain aspects of how the money is spent as in the form of taxes or grants for education.

The music in the game is lacking in most ways, since I played the game for an hour and the music never changes and the sounds effects are standard beeps and repetitive fanfare effects such as fireworks and clapping as well as sighs from your ministers and people when you do something that they don't like. The graphics in the game are considerably lacking flare which was a disappointment to me. When you download Oval Office, it makes you think of similar simulation games, but there is one difference: You really do not see your city grow or see any of the non-player characters actually doing anything. The game reminds me of very old pen-and-paper games where all you do is make choices but you really never see the choices being played out in any type of animation, all you see if text on the screen which in my opinion is a huge downside to the game. I expected Oval Office to be more like the Sims, to where you would be able to make your choices and see them played out rather that generic sound effects and text boxes popping up.

Overall, I feel that Oval Office is not really worth the download, unless all you want to do is read text boxes and not really play a game. Oval Office would have been more effective if it would have incorporated a more immersed game play. I would have to rate this game 2/5; it's a good game if all you want to do is read all day long.

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