Back in 2004, Fearless Leader (Russell Carroll) reviewed the 2004 version of President Forever. Here in 2008, it's time to take up the tradition once again. Though I'm sure there have been tweaks to the game in that time, and of course the issues and candidates have changed, the core of the game looks to be the same.

President Forever 2008 is a simulation game wherein you take on the role of a political candidate for President of the United States of America and campaign about the country, first seeking the electoral votes needed to become your party's candidate, then seeking the votes needed to become President. If this isn't edutainment, I don't know what is. And, as true as the genre's name would suggest, President Forever is both entertaining and educational.

The game takes a concept that seems very basic (you just give speeches and show up for debates, right?) and breaks it out into its requisites parts, turning the whole process into an engaging push and pull between numerous priorities on your way to your goal. It's the depth of the game that is President Forever's greatest asset and largest drawback.

After selecting your candidate, you immediately have a TON of bits of data to attempt to process. What is your candidate's platform? What issues are you strongest on? Where is your support the greatest? What kind of ads would you like to run? When are primaries coming up? The game is absolutely saturated with data to process and employ. In addition to being able to customize sets of info such as those listed above, you can also recruit campaign footsoldiers and crusaders to help you be everywhere around the nation all at once. You can even dig around for dirt on your opponents and try and spin negative news stories about them (or yourself) in your favor.

All this must be taken into account along with the real nuts and bolts of your campaign. You need to give speeches, you need to hold fundraisers, you need to practice your knowledge of the issues and prepare for debates, you need to get out among the people and barnstorm and you need to rest. An exhausted candidate is no good to anyone.

It's very difficult to track all this info on your own, but President Forever does an admirable job of presenting it in a way that is easy to digest. The drawback here is the user interface is pretty heavily utilitarian. There's a map of the US, headshots of the candidates and a good number of icons, but that's about all there is to it. Without really taking the time to study the game's interface, it's just this side shy of incomprehensible. It lacks some of the bells and whistles to interface you get in similar titles such as Democracy… but President Forever also covers much more informational ground.

Making matters worse is that the help information for President Forever is thin, at best. Sure, you can have almost every function in the game defined for you. The problem with those definitions is that they're very literal and not very focused on describing the action within the context of the game. It's very unclear what all the myriad choices presented before you will actually do. It took me hours of frustration and finally a trip to the developer's on-line forum before I learned how to move my candidate from state to state (via the barnstorming tool, by the way, a tidbit that is ludicrously missing from the built-in support information about the barnstorming action). The fact that the game is lacking a nice and simple introductory tutorial is the game's one major flaw. It's almost as if the game only wants to be a niche market title… it doesn't want to be too accessible. That's quite obviously not the goal, but without a simpler entry point for the gamer, it is the net result.

Graphics:
Let's be frank. President Forever does not look good. They've done an admirable job cramming info into a small interface, but it remains a ton of info crammed into a small interface and it will never be able to escape living on the edge of confusion.

Sound:
This is the kind of game I play with the sound off. A musician somewhere is plotting my demise at this very moment for advertising that… but that's how it is. I can't imagine the soundtrack would do anything but irritate on a game like this that requires long minutes of pondering.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is all there is to this title really, which means that it's good that it's in-depth and varied. Each candidate you play as has different strategies and strengths to employ. There's a ton to explore here and it's easy to get immersed in the game in the process.

Concept:
What better way to get people involved in the presidential and political process in this country than to actually make them part of the process? This game takes the mundane and elevates it to something to really be examined and fret over.

Value:
President Forever costs a not terribly expensive $20. However, for educators that price takes a steep dip, costing just $13 per license for a 5-game pack, and down to under $9 for a 100-game pack. And that's awesome.

Overall:
I continue to assert that games like this are worth your time. They're fun, thought-provoking and the kind of gaming that can actually help you in the real world. Understanding the way things work is, well, it's a big part of everything, dagnabbit. President Forever is a densely packed bit of simulation gaming that brings to life this country's most critical political process. Plus, and apologies for making this an afterthought (so think of it as the final word, instead), but there's a version for U.K. and Canadian elections as well. Neat.