Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain

You can keep your Retaliators and keep your supersonic high altitude bombers. What you really want are good ol' Spitfires and Messerschmitts to go dogfighting in – or so Lucasfilm will have us believe in their follow up to the great Battlehawks 1942. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of recent British history will recognise the immortal words used in the title, so it is no shock to find out that this game is a combat flight sim based on aircraft that were around in the first half of the Second World War.

First of all, you can decide which side to fight for, but remember the decision here limits which craft are available to fly – no Spitfires in the Luftwaffe! The Brits have got Hurricanes and Spits to fight in while the German have not only fighters, but medium and long range bombers and dive bombers. Each plane has several missions set aside for it that can be played in any order. The missions are varied and range from straight dogfights to scramble and intercept missions. Once a mission is completed the combat records are updated and stored to disk.

Then there are the campaign games if you feel like playing for a long while, where you take charge of your side's airforce and try to either bomb the blazes out of blighty or not, depending which side you are on.

Search gameplay videos on YouTube (opens in a new tab)