Stardock Entertainment’s The Political Machine 2020 has arrived for PC, for everyone who for some reason can’t get enough of the very same politics that seems to encapsulate every single waking moment of our media-entrenched lives.

Players will take on the role of various Democratic and Republican candidates as they hit the campaign trail with the intent of securing the ultimate position in the Oval Office. You can choose to either play against the AI or take your prowess online and compete in a multiplayer mode.

On the Democrat side you can play as Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, or Tulsi Gabbard.

On the Republican side you can play as Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney or you can create your very own candidate and make a run for office.

After you pick or create your very own politician using a number of different customization parts, you can then run the trail.

Your goal is to hit key territories where you can gather constituents and donations, build up your funds, invest in advertising, and hope to win the bid to represent one of the two major parties.

In order to help bolster your appeal in front of the cameras and to voters, you can endorse specific political ideologies based on a hex grid that allows you to unlock other talking points along similar lines.

Depending on what policies you get behind and how you handle media inquiries will determine how the candidate is perceived by the general public.

I doubt the game will let you run a DNC op to undermine the other candidates in the party by siphoning off delegates to a prescribed front-runner and costing the party the entire elections, but if you could do that (or if it’s in the game) then it would just like real life politics.

Anyway, you’ll have to manage the numbers, check the polls, fish for delegates and run a tight campaign in order to become POTUS.

The big hook for this year’s outing is the ideology system, where candidates can get behind certain systemic ideological principles, many of which are based on real-life talking points.

This system wasn’t quite as well received as the model used in The Political Machine 2016, resulting in some gamers giving The Political Machine 2020 a thumbs down because they felt that in trying to make each candidate unique, it stripped out some of the core features and gameplay depth that made the previous outing more strategic.

Aaron attempted to explain why some things worked and why others didn’t, writing…

“[…] This game crippled so much of what the series had going for it just to implement this new ideology system. No more clear cut stances (really hurts custom characters since now you must pick another candidate’s ideology), types of operatives cut in half, only one type of HQ now, only one type of ad now, TV interviews still don’t really help at all, the charisma stat is way too necessary, custom turn limits are gone, randomized games are gone, campaign mode is gone, scenarios are still gone…

 

“It sucks because they had so much potential with this one. The new graphics and UI look excellent and the writing is as witty as ever, especially with the new Colbert and Shapiro interviews. Hopefully they can patch in all of these additions, buffs, and removed features that I, as well as these other negative reviews, have pointed out and this could maybe eventually even be better that PM 2016. It would probably be best to wait on a couple updates or for a big sale to buy this game until then…”

User reviews like aaron resulted in the game receiving a “Mixed” review rating on Steam, with some people liking some changes and others disliking the changes.

Steam user Blep seemed to point out a few of the game’s flaws and offer some constructive criticism for a potential patch or update, writing…

“I was a fan of endorsements, and enjoyed the ability to really invest in one type of building and snipe an NRA endorsement from a Republican or a Union endorsement from a Democrat. I also liked the Political Capital system to hire operatives, versus what we have now which is a simply monetary system where the operatives get cheaper as the campaign goes on. Now that i’m onto length of campaign, 21 weeks is not enough to mount a viable campaign, especially as a republican. I mentioned that I have 50 hours in the 2016 version and have beat just about every candidate on each side on the hardest difficulty. It was a nail biter each time, but I loved the challenge there. Meanwhile, TPM2020 normal mode is more difficult than masochistic difficulty from 2016. I have not yet managed to win as a republican, though I have only tried a few times. Meanwhile, winning as a democrat isn’t very difficult at all.

 

“I’m skeptical about the town hall feature. If you have an interview and a townhall in the same week, and you choose to do the interview, the other candidate will have already gotten their town hall and bought an issue, increasing the cost of your issues just because the town hall popped up on the same day as an interview (which seems to have very minimal impact so far through seeing early access videos, streams, and my own playtime.)”

Others liked the ideology system because it added a twist into how players were able to build up their candidate and campaign in different states.

However, even for those who did like the new system, they felt that it wasn’t fleshed out enough or offered enough personal customization from the player’s end, with Zoomer humour writing…

“It’s another Political Machine game. That’s all I can really say. I was expecting a little more, I guess? The ideology system is a nice touch, but I wish they’d gone a step further and allowed us to create our own, since a lot of them are tied to the specific personal ideologies of existing candidates and part of the game’s draw is meant to be creating your own funny little political man and seeing how he does. Besides that, there’s seemingly fewer stock candidates to pick from, no new customization options, no fundamental mechanical changes besides the ideology system, and generally very little that’s new. It’s a fun game at its core, which is why I’m recommending it, but it’s not a unique or new experience compared to the previous instalment. Set your expectations accordingly.”

There are those who like much of what The Political Machine 2020 has to offer, while some feel that with more updates and refinement it could become a much better game than what it is today.

You can learn more about The Political Machine 2020 by visiting the Steam store page or by visiting the official website.