Sling your hook, Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2

Too eager to please and blighted by buggy reflections, so-so scenery, and flawed cameras, Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2’s stay on the THC toe-warmer was mayfly brief. Within ninety minutes of making my first cast, I’d had enough and was reinstalling its superior predecessor.

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Angling for an armour sim angst alleviator

Tank Squad missions can be pretty intense. When you’re not scanning scenery for dialed-in AT guns, trading AP rounds with T-34s and KV-1s, or attempting to evade mortar barrages, you’re often dealing with aggressive enemy infantry, directing your own dismounts, or calling in arty and air strikes. It’s generally great fun, but I think I’m going to need to partner TS with a good wind-down game in order to keep ersatz battle fatigue at bay.

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Win action-packed Panzer sim Tank Squad

I spent yesterday evening in the company of Steam’s youngest armour game and during three hours of exciting Eastern Front action managed to engineer the downfall of numerous Tigers and Panzer IVs. If simcade Tank Squad was a T-34 or KV-1 sim, this trail of destruction would have been a source of considerable pride. As the game is played from an exclusively Axis perspective, you’ll understand why I tramped off to bed somewhat red-faced.

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VE Day freebie

To mark the 80th anniversary of VE day, 1CGS is giving away IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad’s first DLC and price slashing (-80%) the numerous add-ons that followed it. Available for nowt for the next 38 hours through il2sturmovik.com, Battle of Moscow comes with eight steeds, the rangiest of which is the Ju 88 A-4, the dinkiest/dumpiest, the I-16.

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Review Reprise: The Mystery of the Druids

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 appear as one of THC’s daily posts. In late September 2001, inexplicably* PC Gamer asked me to step outside my heavily militarised comfort zone and review a point-and-click adventure.

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London calling

If anything is guaranteed to make a patriotic English wargamer’s blood boil, it’s the sight of a Nazi flag flying over Buck House. Yesterday, a few hours after watching the Red Arrows stripe the sky over the King’s unpretentious London crib, I returned to the Mall in the company of a force of tea-fuelled commandos and far-from-formidable British tanks.

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