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Ever since man discovered the two of the things he liked most were fighting and mucking around in water, there have been navies. This is particulary true of our noble little island. For years, we've been giving everyone a good tonking on the high seas from Philip of Spain's Armada to Adolf's pocket battleships.

In this simulation, you have a choice of whether to participate in a WWI battle or command a fleet of more modern ships in WWII. So really you get two games for the price of one, and what a price it is, thirty guid. World War I calls the German forces the Axis powers. Of course all history bods like me will instantly know that the axis forces were Germany, Japan and Italy in WWII. The World War I scenarios have a total of 79 ships British and 'Axis' 28 different guns and six sizes of torpedoes ranging from lethal to fairly lethal.

There are four scenarios in the WWI package and each is very well documented, with a full background, dates sea control and times. There are several types of game such as Battleline which is just fire, hit, kill; Transport, where you have to protect a supply convoy and guide them off the edge of the screen. There is also Scenario Design Mode which I will describe later as it will help to make the review look well balanced. The World War I game is not as much fun as the WWII game, yet is much easier for the beginner.

After you have mastered the art of sinking ships you progress onto the WWII game, which is similar except better than WWI. For starters, the weapons are far superior technically to those in the previous game. You also have a pallet of 79 ships to choose from, only this time they include the Frency navy (or what's left of it). The best feature of all is that radar is standard fitting on all ships made after 1943 which saves you having to go within point blank range of the enemy to get visual sighting to target.

Now I'll tell you about the design phase - it's wicked. Just like a scaled down nautical war game construction kit. You can design your own islands, the size of the opposition, but best of all, you can customise your own ship. In other words, you can stick ten of the most powerful weapons on your ship, adjust the damage control rating so it's almost impossible for the enemy to blow you up, and turn yourself into the world's meanesdt floating fortress. Just imagine if he'd had something like that. WWII would have been over in a week.

To give credit where its due, this is good war game with excellent documentation, and some very good features, but as usual with SSI it's grossly overpriced, maybe at a tenner cheaper yes, but at the moment, no.