Most of your play time is spent reading menus, charts and graphs in order to figure out how to get enough votes. Every state has its own political views, so the trick is addressing those viewpoints while not changing how other states see you. Each week you spend points trying to campaign in other states in order to win support; you can give speeches, place ads, fund-raise or build up political infrastructure. The final two elements are probably the most important to focus on. Everything has a price, so you need money if you want to run a strong campaign, while building up a strong infrastructure allows you to hire people to help your candidate gain awareness with people and wrap up key supporters.
The system works, though it becomes a bit formulaic regardless of which campaign you're running. Target the big states, get a headquarters down and then go for the smaller, undecided ones. There isn't much room to attempt anything different since the A.I. seems bent on running things at certain way... again, one of the side-effects of having a game based on a real process. Even though the issues and process remain the same, the alternate campaigns are more interesting because you're dealing with unknown variables.
Even in alternate campaigns, some of the issues are either too broad or there's little relation between them. Issues like "The Environment" take several little, yet vastly different issues and cluster them up into one issue, which really doesn't work. At the same time, you can support two issues that, in practice, would contradict each other. If a candidate is for more social programs then it's goofy that they'd also support lower taxes. There's no way to call out the other candidate, even when they blatantly flip-flop on issues from state to state.
Though it can get repetitive, The Political Machine 2008 is, like the real thing, still oddly addictive. It's nothing that will keep you playing for months on end, though for $20, it's a good deal for strategy fans who are in the political spirit.
