Category Sims

The THC Relic Roadshow

Today’s off-topic articlette is inspired by a recent comment from an Italy-based Cornerite. If you visit THC regularly, chances are you have an avid interest in history, and, like Nutfield and myself, have at least one found, inherited, or purchased…

Why I love train sims

I’ve written hundreds of articles during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. While some make me cringe with embarrassment when I read them today, a few like the 2011 Eurogamer piece posted below, arguably warrant a second airing.

V2Z

V is for Vintage vroom. If anything is likely to lure me back to open wheel sim racing, it’s the work of Assetto Corsa enrichers, Historic Sim Studios. Using their payware and gratis race cars and circuits, it’s possible to…

Q2U

Q is for Quick tea card. Card no. 17 in ‘Locomotives’, a 25-card set issued by Barbers Teas of Birmingham in 1956, features Cock o’ the North, the first of Nigel Gresley’s striking but flawed P2s. Like the other five…

L2P

L is for Lamentable landscapes. Clumsily created and employed, AI art can ruin otherwise sound computer games. For proof of this, look no further than Frontline: Assault Corps, a £12 hex wargame in which southern Italy looks awfully like the…

G2K

G is for Green Tree Games gird their loins. Announced in the year the RAF retired its last Hawker Herbert, and the Pope described hula hoops as “Satan’s bangles” in his Easter address, Burden of Command has a precise release…

A2F

If you want the second part of March’s alphabetised news round-up, you’re going to have to thank me profusely for this part, and give me preferential extraction rights for all your titanium, zirconium, lithium, and graphite.

Hmmsim Metro: Seoulful but soulless?

I’m not sure I’ll ever warm to Hmmsim Metro’s deserted platforms and ugly PSDs, but it only took me an hour or two of virtual EMU operation to get over my dislike of this Korean train sim’s pedantic stopping rules,…

Review Reprise: Hidden & Dangerous

I’ve written hundreds of reviews, previews, and retrospectives during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, now and again something from my archive may…

GHPC was leopardised last week

Gunner, HEAT, PC’s latest hot-under-the-collar Haus, the early* Leopard 1, hits hard, goes like stink, and cuts quite a dash in its scalloped skirt. However, because it does its rangefinding with two lenses rather than a laser beam, using it…

Review Reprise: European Truck Simulator 2

I’ve written hundreds of reviews, previews, and retrospectives during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, now and again something from my archive may…

More molehills, please

Simulatia and Grognardia can be awfully dour places. In realistic military and vehicular fare, frivolous details tend to be rare. While the lack of the whimsical and the extraneous arguably isn’t surprising given the development demands elsewhere, I love encountering…