Constructor

Strategy 1997 Dos Dosbox Acclaim Business Building Simulation

Tough but humorous management sim

Constructor is another addition to the crowded city-building genre, akin to Sim City, but manages to stand out slightly from its competition due to its humorous outlook and challenging, complex gameplay. Your aim is to manage your construction company so that it becomes the most successful in town, pushing your rivals out of business as you go. This requires using your teams of workers and foremen to build manufacturing facilities and subsequently houses, which you can then rent out to the wealthy and poor alike. Along the way, you might find it useful to bribe local officials while unscrupulous bosses can also steal from their competitors, burn their property and hire hippies and gangsters to carry out the dirty work. Constructor retains the 3D isometric viewpoint popular with other similar games and the graphics are certainly detailed enough but, outside of the cutscenes, the game lacks visual personality and individuality. The humour makes up for this to a certain degree, and the game is genuinely funny at times, and continues to amuse even after extended play. It is also immensely challenging, with tough AI rivals and so many elements that require constant attention that it is not really recommended for beginners to this kind of game. However, for genre fans who can put up with the occasionally clunky interface and unforgiving gameplay, this is worth investigating.

Modern city builder

It's the late 90s and city builder games haven't all went into the realm of 3D, though there were a few that did. Constructor however, remains devoted to the isometric perspective, but it manages a very sharp and very nice manner of wrapping it all up, never feeling stifling to the gameplay. You won't feel as if you're struggling to understand the architecture of certain areas, you don't get that feeling that your streets are somewhat represented as overlapping or any other strange, unfortunate 2D glitches. In terms of variety of building and other tile sets, the game is a bit vanilla in its feel. There isn't a myriad of styles to choose from, but within the modern feel and epoque that is represented, you get enough variety. Once you start building, you will get to chose freely, in sandbox mode, but there are also game options that feel a lot more concise, especially when you have to take into consideration the economic side. While it might no longer be a match to recent city builders, Constructor is without a doubt a game worth checking out.

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