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If your idea of a lazy Sunday afternoon includes a distended gut from overeating, a mug of coffee and a black and white war film on BBC2 then you should enjoy Lucasfilm's latest creation. Their Finest Hour is an extremely comprehensive multi-aeroplane flight simulator set in 1940. The game covers the Battle of Britain from both sides of the conflict, British and German.

You decide what kind of game you want to play; training flights, combat flights, custom missions and entire campaigns can be flown.

The training option enables you to become familiarised with the plane and enter into combat situations straight from the menu. The type of training flight you engage in depends entirely on the plane you've chosen to fly. Options include flying Spitfires and Hurricanes with the R.A.F. or Messerschmitts, Junkers and Dorniers for the Luftwaffe. Sorties include strafing foreign runways or shooting down circling enemy planes.

The combat options are similar to the training runs except they're historically accurate. You can bomb French, German or British factories knowing that this really happened in WWII.

The option with greatest scope is the Campaign option. This enables you to change the course of history - for example by winning the Battle of Britain for Germany! You fly 25 missions and have complete control over the flight group, the plane types, the number of planes, the formation and the flight plan.

All you need now is a large map, 30 girls wearing khaki with clipped BBC accents, some huge bowl-shaped headphones and a few wooden rakes to create your very own fighter control.

The graphics are superb! The cockpits are faithful replicas of the originals and your field of vision is the same as you'd see in a real plane. By pressing the appropriate key on the numeric keypad you can change your viewpoint. If you're in a bomber you can sit in the rear gunner's seat and really surprise a few Junkers.

Control of the planes is fairly easy and thankfully you can't do stupid things like 3D negative rolls or cartwheels across the ground. Pointing the nose too high leads to a warning message saying you're about to stall. If you get shot up and decide to bail out a nice graphic of your plane plummeting earthwards greets you just to rub in the facct that you've destroyed the thing.

Sound is dull, but then over the top sound would have blown the feel of the simulator.

This game has enough depth to warrant returning to it again and again. If all you want is a quick dogfight then you can carry out a training flight and if you want to play one game for a month then the campaign option is there.

Their Finest Hour successfully recreates the gritty realism of the 1940s. These spitfires don't come equipped with Sidewinder missiles or electronic counter measure circuitry, they just have a couple of side-mounted machine guns. In order to shoot down a German you really need to engage in combat; none of this sissy lock-on and fire type combat, buy a real plane to plane dogfight.

Their Finest Hour just oozes quality, depth and exciting gameplay and more than justifies its 30 quid price tag.