Not every action gamer is the type to get right down into the thick of things and stab people with his own two hands. Some of us are actually world dictators in the making and would rather see swarms of tanks, planes, and troops doing our bidding for us. For that type of gamer, this is the sim and the strategy game, two genres that have existed ever since we developed the mouse and the keyboard. After the horrible showing of Halo Wars last year, gamers are ready to see a pickup in this genre this holiday season. Here are some of the sim and strat games showcased at Gamescom 09 that action gamers with a tyrannical bent have to look forward to.

Silent Hunter 5

Past sim games have allowed us to control pretty much everything, from households, to war fronts, to airplanes, to space travel. The role of the sim game is to give you, the gamer, near godlike control over a certain aspect of reality, and Silent Hunter 5 simply shifts that reality underwater. The game gives you full control of a submarine and everything on it, from crew, to weapons, to those little posters of naked chicks you put on your troops walls. The trailer is mostly cinematic so there is not much that can be said about gameplay, but hell how can any sim game that gives you control of a war submarine end up sucking?

Tropico 3

When I made that joke about sim and strat gamers being future world dictators, I really wasn’t kidding. Tropico 3 is essentially a dictator simulator that allows you to subjugate your people with all the flexibility and freedom a real dictator has in doing so. Most fans were not impressed with Tropico 2 when it first came out, so many are regarding Tropico 3 as the “true sequel” to Tropico 1. As long as I can shoot rebellious freedom fighters in the head for my own sick pleasure, I’m sold.

Starcraft 2

Now this game is the granddaddy of them all. Gamers have been waiting years for Starcraft’s sequel to finally come out, over 10 years to be exact. A huge rush of info came in front the Starcraft front these past few weeks, mostly because Gamescom and Blizzcon happened at the exact same time. We saw new units, new maps, new gameplay features, but coolest of all was this presentation showing off the customizability of the map editor. It looks like Starcraft: Ghost didn’t die after all.

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• Gamescom Updates – RPGs
• Gamescom Updates — Horror Gaming
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