This Is The President PC Review

This Is The President is a satirical political game by SuperPAC and published by THQ Nordic. Players take control of a newly elected President of the United States of America, who makes a few bold campaign promises during his victory night. In reality, they are a former crooked businessman who is out to manipulate the world into giving them absolute power. It is up to players to bribe, lie, and slander their way towards a nation that only caters to them.

The elected President is nameless, simply referred to as “you” throughout the game. They are always male, a former high-ranking corporate officer under suspicion of serious embezzlement, and married to the cutthroat Ellie. The duo’s goal is to enact Amendment 28 to the US Constitution; which will grant you life-like immunity and rule over America, while Ellie will serve forever as First Lady. To assist you are various members of the cabinet, including Vice President and forever FBI agent Antonio Staba, head lawyer Clint Glover, head of cyber security Ollie Skouloff, and guard Alvaro Guardado. 

The vast majority of the game is sending the right person on assignments, making sure they are paid on time and are given reasonable vacation time to avoid burnout. Staff members might do great work, quit, or even possibly die on the job. However, players will meet even more people to hire their four-year term.

The game’s user interface is well organized. All staff members are displayed on the bottom of the screen, with additional information when clicking on them. Current issues can be parsed as either a list or by their location on the global map. Additionally, the major story quest is always shown on the right side, assisting one with a key goal for the month or entire year.

This Is The President is all about balancing corruption, funds, and public opinion. Players will spend time paying out just enough to make people happy while amassing wealth to further bigger schemes. In the end, one needs to have 90% approval and two-thirds of Congress to pass Amendment 28.

Even when buttering up others, people will often forget promises after months or years. Players will need to periodically remind and re-initiate plans with legislators often, or things can fall through. However, this forgetfulness also works for players as well. One can make bad promises or be wrought with scandal one month, but then have a nearly clean slate later on.

Among some of the first campaigns, declarations include sweeping and even crazy ideas. Options range from curing cancer, sending a man to Mars, and ending all poverty. But like most everything else this is just smoke and mirrors to excite the public and get Amendment 28 passed. There is no need to actually deliver, especially if there is a scapegoat to blame instead.  

As time goes on, players’ focus will expand to larger regions around the world. At the start, the President will mainly be focusing on adjusting to the White House and dealing with the incumbent President as he makes his exit. It will then zoom out around Washington DC, regional parts of the United States, and then other countries as things go international. Players will have to contend with the policies and views of leaders from Russia, Mexico, China, France, and more.  

While This Is The President at first acts like choices matter, this often gets downplayed the longer the term goes on. Many events will result in strange or nonsensical outcomes, with approval and money shifting seemingly at random. The President themselves will often get dragged down by actions of the cabinet and the First Lady, forcing the plot without many decisions on the player’s part. By the third and fourth terms, it becomes questionable how the President hasn’t been impeached, assassinated, or denounced by the rest of the world.

This isn’t to say that it is impossible to fail completely. There are alternate bad endings that can arise during the end of each term. This typically comes in the form of picking an outrageously bad choice or screwing over a large number of staff quickly. This is more likely to happen on the hardest difficulty setting, while the normal and easy mode is almost guaranteed to ace Amendment 28.

The game’s biggest flaw is that the characters have no extra depth or huge twists down the road. What each of them showcases in the first 10 minutes of meeting them is how they will continue to act for the next 20+ hours. This is overtly true for conniving Ellie and incompetent Antonio, who will be with players through thick and thin.

This Is The President has an interesting concept but doesn’t have strong enough narrative, dialogue, or characters to carry it the entire way through. If the game hyper-focused on just a few days, weeks, or, months it could have been a stand-out experience. However, by stretching the game to an entire four years length it loses all steam more than halfway through.
 

Kurtis Seid, NoobFeed
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