When I went back to re-download and play Surviving The Aftermath, I also noticed that Surviving Mars was in my library. I guess I must've bought it a while back on sale and forgotten about it. Due to the similarities of the name, I mistakenly thought that these 2 games were developed by the same studio, so I downloaded both. I had also seen some headlines and social media posts about controversy regarding a "Re-Launched" version of Surviving Mars. I wasn't quite sure what was going on there, but I decided to give the original game a test run and see if the Re-Launched version would be something I might like to try. If Re-Launched fixed some of the complaints that I had with the original game, than maybe I would upgrade to that. Or at least, that's what naive me thought.

After playing for a day or 2, I was liking Surviving Mars, so I went to the Steam page to see how cheap the upgrade to Re-Launched is. That is when I realized what all the controversy is about.

Paradox, in it's infinitely consumer-unfriendly wisdom, decided to make Surviving Mars: Re-Launched into a completely new game; it is not an upgrade or update to the original game! Paradox is selling Re-Launched at full price, even if you already have the original game. Worse yet, Re-Launched is basically a "complete edition" of the game, with all the DLC expansions packaged in, and with a slight graphics update. The original game looks fine as is, so I don't think a graphics update was necessary. But they also de-listed the original game, and all of its DLC expansions, so that if you own the original game, you cannot buy any of the expansions!

Re-Launched is not an update to Surviving Mars; it is a separate, full-priced release on Steam.

This is a kick in the gut to anybody who bought the original version of the game. Especially if you never got around to buying the DLC, and are now completely locked out of being able to do so.

I'm sorry, but this is basically strike 3 for Paradox. I gave them plenty of chances to right their ship, but they have now completely capsized and have lost all of my good will. They bungled the premature release of Star Trek: Infinite and killed that game basically out of the gate. They then went on to do the same thing to Cities Skylines II, and then fired Colossal Order from its own series. And now there's these shenanigans with Surviving Mars. This is all on top of all the older controversy involving Paradox's greedy piecemeal DLC pricing, releasing updates to games that make old saves incompatible, and releasing games that felt generally incomplete.

I have had it with Paradox! I don't think I can buy another game from Paradox, and I am actually starting to feel guilty for playing the Paradox games that I already own. It's a shame too, because Paradox, as a publisher, sells games that are right up my alley. They specialize in strategy, management, and simulation games -- often with historic or sci-fi themes. Now I feel like I can't play any of these games, or else I'm giving money and support to a company that might very well be the sleaziest, greediest, and overall worst game publisher on the market right now. Possibly as bad or worse than the likes of Ubisoft, Activision, EA, and 2K.

I don't know, maybe Ubisoft, Activision, EA, and 2K are still far worse. I haven't been keeping up as much with news on those companies since I haven't been on social media as much, and since I actively avoid their games (other than buying used copies of EA's football games). On top of all that, Stephanie Sterling hasn't been making new Jimquisition episodes (now rebranded as "High-Steph") to tell me all about the evils of these companies and their executives. Well, except for a recent episode that reminded everyone of former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick's close association with convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein...

Without a decent, new iteration of SimCity for me to play, I've been looking high and low for new city simulator games in order to scratch that particular itch. I spent a large chunk of time a few years ago playing Cities XL, but never got around to reviewing it (maybe I'll post aretro-review in the future). Cities XL has so far been the best of the bunch and has a very wide scope, but it's developer has folded, and the game has never truly felt complete.

So I've started looking at more niche titles. I gave Children of the Nile and Caesar IV a go a few years ago, and both were pretty good, but just didn't hold me over for very long. So when Tropico 5 went on sale on Steam, I picked it up and put it on the shelf till I took a break from Civ. The game has also been released on XBox 360, and it has also been announced for a PS4 release sometime in 2015, but I've been playing the PC version.

The primary gimmick of the Tropico series is that the player isn't a mayor (as most city simulators claim); instead, you play as a dictator who is granted governorship of a small Caribean island-nation by a European power. It's basically a Cuba-simulator. At the start of a game, you must create a dictator avatar, and that character can have children and heirs in order to maintain your dynasty. From a meta standpoint, this gives much greater justification for the breadth of power that the player has over the development of the city. But this dictatorial theme isn't just a gimmick; the game actually does use it for gameplay purposes.

Poor management of relations with internal factions and external nations
can lead to revolts and open warfare on your streets.

In addition to balancing workers versus jobs and various citizen satisfaction metrics, the player also has to worry about maintaining your position of power and dealing on the international stage. Much like the Democracy games, the player actually has to win elections in order to avoid losing the game, and so you must balance the favor of various competing factions. It's nowhere near as deep as Democracy, since there's only about four factions (which change depending on the current era), but it does add an extra challenge that a game like SimCity lacks. After all, your mayor-hood in SimCity is indisputable.

It can be hard to manage the favor of these various factions and their members, since it's hard sometimes to tell exactly what is making them happy or unhappy...