I Am Your President – Review

Here in the U.K, Election year is upon us and we’ve got months of party-political broadcasts, government propaganda and endless promises of a brighter future, before whoever wins inevitably spends the next five years screwing up everything they’ve used to get into power.
But over in the states, things aren’t any more straightforward and, on this occasion, YOU are the President of the United States and if you can survive assassination, nuclear war, scandals and your chief of staff taking too many days off, you might be able to make America great.

When you start off, I am Your President, you’re given a host of options to help establish the game ahead, the easiest is difficulty, but you’ll also answer a series of questions on your political alignment (Democratic or Republican) as well as hints to your background and preferences which will help shape the political landscape.
Soon enough you’ll be in the soon-to-be familiar surroundings of the oval office which serves as the backbone for most of the gameplay and your presidency.
After a few formal and not so formal introductions, you’ll be ready to tackle your first week on the job (or be left in the foetal position wishing you’d gone through the tutorial)

Each in-game day represents a “turn” but that’s about as turn-based as the game feels, as you’ll be sat at your desk, to hear a knock on the door, sometimes it’ll be an innocent piece of news or a standard query, others will be bills that you’re ask to approve or refuse such as the banning of those pesky dangerous chemicals the mega-corps have in our fridge-freezers.
With each decision your game, the storyline, repercussions and route forward will all change, there’s even a political board that shows your alignment and approach which will further effect how things progress.
Each day you’re given a frief summary to sign off on how well (or badly) you’ve done, before progressing on to the next pile of politcs to wade through.

Day-to-day these drop-in visits will help shape your narrative, along with press conferences and tough-decisions which are bound to upset somebody no matter how good you try to be.

There are also a few other standout areas, such as the global map and your policies, the global map allows you to gain information on, or set up a trade route with other countries, doing either might improve or deteriorate their relations with the US, while your policies will gain tokens with each turn and allow you to spend them to action policies which will again effect your presidency,
Better healthcare might be costly but most people apart from those big pharma corps believe life is the most valuable asset, and then there’s education, policing, terrorism and the usual question marks.

It won’t be long before you’re faced with decisions which can quickly define your career as president and as you’d hope, there’s plenty of lifelike scenarios such as abortion, migration and gun crime, but it’s all delivered with a dash of slap-stick with the tongue stuck firmly in the cheek.

There’s no doubt that “I am your President” is more than happy to poke fun at itself, while defining the American dream. Which stops it from feeling too serious, while still giving plenty of challenging decisions.

The overall presentation continues the silly-serious nature, with characters entering your office, looking serious enough, until they turn to walk out and you realise it’s literally a cardboard cut-out, there’s definitely a lot more that could have been done graphically, and the sound is mostly limited by a repetitive and soon-to-be tiring soundtrack.
But it’s the feel of the game, the delivery and the writing that all makes the more aesthetical shortcomings, feel as short-lived as my first few terrible attempts at running America.
I can’t deny that a few tetchy first impressions were very quickly outweighed by the vastness of potential path lines as you choose one decision or the next, and while you’d no doubt get a few repetitive lines every now and then I found there were more than enough curve balls to keep it entetaining.

I am your president takes me back to my childhood, with those “Choose your own adventure” books, where you’d read a few paragraphs and then turn to page x or y, depending what decision you wanted to make.
There’s a similar feel as you’re never usually bombarded with too much text to read through, but you constantly felt like you had enough information.
Available at $19.99 (£16.74) and on sale at $15.99 (£13.39) at the time of writing, which I think represents perfectly fair value, and while there’s not much action, there’s plenty of gameplay and excitement as you navigate your own presidency with a wide range of realistic and not so real scenarios.

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