Copa City Review – FIFA World Cup Host City Simulator

I've been a fan of the Kicksphere for as long as I can remember, and my team of choice is - for better or worse - Manchester United. When I was young, I was attracted to the fast-paced, attractive football of your Giggs and Scholes, the never-give-up nature of the Neville brothers, and the fact that your Wes Brown and John O'Shea could and did play far above the level people expected of them. It was a good time. Not so much now. Also, absolutely nothing of that has anything to do with Copa City, other than that it's about the beautiful game.

Beyond bankruptcy, riots, and good old-fashioned corruption (of the moral and financial kind), there is something to be said for the World Cup: it brings an insane amount of tourism to an area and strains host countries and cities well beyond what they can cope with. It is, after all, the most-watched event across the world, with very little coming close to it. But have you ever thought about having to deal with the logistics of running a city - or at least the football part of a city - during a big match? You get to find out now in Copa City.

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I'm going to have to start by saying that this game annoys me, which is both a good and a bad thing. I don't really need to explain why it's a bad thing, but the good thing is that it shows I do have some investment in the game. Copa City is not living up to its potential, and some of the reasons for this should have been so easy to avoid; it's like missing an open goal. I'm going to start with what ends up being the biggest issue: translation.

This isn't a game designed by an English team, or by anybody whose first language is English, or by somebody who has thought about the question "would somebody who didn't design this know how to do it?" That much is evident with just how opaque everything ends up being. A simple example can be an objective to build something, and, technically speaking, the thing it is telling you to build doesn't exist. A quest to build a sign, for example, may actually be an advertising board. Sometimes it's something as simple as that, but the sheer number of these issues that permeate the game becomes insurmountable.

The tutorial is long and eventually takes you to Warsaw, Rio, and then Berlin, but I found Warsaw almost impossible to do right at the last hurdle. The game requires you to ensure each stand meets the security requirements. It wants you to do this without even telling you the security requirements for each stand, and eventually, all I did was keep swapping and changing through simple trial and error to get through the stage. I'm no novice at these things, but this is where I said, "Oh, you can just F-off".

A game needs to give the player feedback, and this fails at that simple task. Why did I fail an objective? For example, I unlocked stations in every district, but I failed an objective that required me to unlock one in each district. Hell, I still don't know why I succeeded in some other objectives. You have the overarching match-readiness bar, but it's pretty opaque about how it fills up. The only thing I still understand about this game is its three gameplay measures: food, fun, and security.

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These three are linked to the three types of fans you can bring in. Ultras are your Millwall fans, ready to murder somebody just because they happen to be breathing, and you need security to keep them in check. Family fans require fun, because children like fun. Core fans require food because they are fat consumerist slobs, just waiting for that next pukka pie. Much like any other city builder, you're just ensuring that needs are met and that you have the resources to do so.

These resources are money, volunteers, specialists, and stewards. Volunteers staff your buildings outside the stadium, stewards inside. Specialists allow you to build some of the higher-level structures, as well as unlock new parts of the world to draw fans in from, and money is just that. The difference with Copa City to your traditional city-builder, and that's what this is - but with a football fan overlay - is that you can't just build anywhere, you have specific 'fan parks' which you can unlock for a small price. The multiple fan parks in a region all contribute to the overall level of that region, and each city - Warsaw, Rio, and Berlin - has multiple regions.

The other measures in the game are the fans themselves and the number of tickets sold for the upcoming match. You bring in more fans primarily by running advertising campaigns across other regions of the world, luring them in like the Pied Piper of Footround. The eventual aim is to fill the city with fans, bringing in more money for you and selling every seat in the stadium, all without the supporters burning the city down. Fail to meet fans' needs long enough, and you will lose a district, causing them to move elsewhere, and it can spiral quickly.

This is where I really like Copa City. It's an interesting balancing act, as with most city builders, where you have to meet the needs of a growing population by selecting structures and placing them in the right locations. Here, for example, some fan zones benefit from a nearby city structure. A police station, for example, increases the effect of safety buildings. You can also move fans from one district to another, even getting bonuses if a district is "taken over" by a certain fanbase. Doing all of this in a finite space, on a deadline, and trying to make sure you advertise to bring more people in and sell tickets makes for an interesting challenge.

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This is why Copa City annoys me. The game it wants to be is within touching distance, but there are barriers, and some are currently impenetrable. Every time I log on, a new bug occurs. Objectives disappear from the list. I've had icons not appear until I've closed the game and reloaded. I've had simple functions not work, meaning it's just a matter of luck whether I can even complete an objective, and this is on top of the poorly translated text, which just doesn't give you the information you need.

I still persevered for over 30 hours, which should tell you something. If this were an early access game, I'd be far more inclined to be generous. I'd be saying how the core is there, and it's clearly going to be great once they iron out the (many) bugs, fix the UI, and add a bit more content - three cities, and each building to one game isn't enough. The base is there; it looks great, and watching the city get busier and the stadium fill up as you add features to it is genuinely fun.

All in all, I really want to like Copa City. I have enjoyed the minute-by-minute, despite the game itself trying to hinder me. There is a gem in here, but it's currently so rough that I couldn't blame somebody for passing and going onto the next one, particularly with what is a high price for an indie game. The developers are already pumping out updates that will likely solve all the issues I've listed, leaving a game I would highly recommend. Until that point, I can't recommend it to anyone other than those willing to persevere through the many issues.

PC version reviewed. Copy provided by the publisher.

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5

WCCFTECH RATING

Copa City

Copa City is a genuinely promising game that, through updates, could be great. The unique setting and interesting mechanics (once you figure them out) are let down by various bugs, poor - sometimes zero - explanation of objectives and game mechanics due to shoddy translations and poor design, and what does end up being a lack of replay value due to the one-match nature of the setting. Were this an early-access launch, it would be laudable that it's in the state it is. As a full launch, at £30, this is a wait and see.

Pros

• Good looking game enhanced when the crowds of fans enter the city
• The minute-by-minute of the game is genuinely fun
• Interesting mechanics across fan management, building and balancing needs...

Cons

• ...if the game does decide to explain all of these mechanics, which it doesn't due to shoddy translations and sometimes zero explanation
• Adding to this, it throws tasks at you without remotely explaining how to fulfil the task. Sometimes this will cause a game over. Other times, it just punishes you.
• Let down by a number of bugs, from visual bugs, UI issues, and at times things simply not detecting at all
• Limited content and replay value due to there only being three cities, each offering only the one match

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