Every Tuesday I like to take some time to focus on the hardworking and dedicated “YouTubers” within the gaming community, well that or I just link a fun or entertaining video. This week features two videos, one that shows some of the upcoming SimCity’s more destructive characteristics, while the other shows off the eagerly awaited Star Trek-esque free to play game Star Command with 13 minutes of space-age gameplay footage. Neither of these two games has been released yet, but both are attempting to lure in potential fans by promoting their games with well narrated gameplay videos. Everyone knows how much I prefer a well narrated piece of gameplay footage to some boring teaser trailer so let’s jump right in.
Of course the new SimCity is going to have some kind of natural disasters for players to wreck havoc on their bustling cities. It wouldn’t be SimCity without them. The thing that caught my eye in this video is not the means of destruction, all of which have been in SimCity before, but how proper preparation beforehand can actually help to mitigate some of the damage. As you can see focusing too heavily in any one direction can leave a player vulnerable to some of the game’s disasters; the industrial city had no means of repairing all of the damage from an earthquake and the ritzy high-rise city was shattered quite easily by a meteor storm. The one city that was prepared had evenly distributed their resources into public services such as firefighters, police, and hospitals. Even in a humorous video like this, SimCity’s developers are still advising players on the importance of proper city management, even in the face of an alien invasion.
Speaking of aliens… If you had thought that all of my X-Com talk left me too weary to speak about aliens and sci-fi, think again. Warballoon is showing off 13 minutes of their free-to-play spaceship sim called Star Command, and so far it looks like they’ve put all of that Kickstarter money to good use. There’s a lot more to this game than I originally thought, and even though it looks like Star Trek through the eyes of the original X-Com there’s a lot more going on here than I thought there would be. The video goes through the beginning of the game, showing fans how to get started and how to turn a lonely captain in a quiet ship into the leader of a full functioning starship. I’m still skeptical about a game this robust being free-to-play, even though they did mention that it won’t be pay-to-win. I’m definitely more excited about the game than I was before I saw the video. It will all come down to how the monetize the content with this game, if it’s done right I think I’ll sign on and command a crew of my own.
