World War II: Tank Commander, published by Reef Entertainment, is an incredibly playable tank combat simulation game.

You are in command of a Sherman tank in General Patton's 4th Armored Division as you destroy enemy armor and infantry, escort Allied convoys, rescue hostages and help free Europe from Nazi rule.

World War II: Tank Commander features 30 objectives across 10 levels. That may not sound like much, but the missions are quite long and very engrossing.

This game has been optimised for the AMD 64, but even on a 32 bit processor it looks gorgeous. You may need to update your graphics drivers, as we had stability issues on one of our test machines that was running older nVidia drivers, but on an up to date system you are in for a great looking, great sounding and great playing experience.

Both the graphics and the sound (which includes EAX 4 surround sound options) give a WWII-era feel to the game, and really help with becoming immersed in the action. The attention to detail on the animations is wonderful, even down to dead livestock lying in fields, and the animations of people who have been injured.

This is a tank sim, but it is not one of those hyper-accurate, frustrating, manual perusing simulations that takes so long to figure out you may as well join the army and play for real. This is a game that has managed to find the balance between playability and realism.

The tanks feel like tanks - they are slow, they don’t like turning quickly, and they can take some punishment (although, disappointingly, they can’t knock down wooden fences that get in their way.) However, the controls are very much similar to a first person shooter, and are incredibly easy to pick up.

There were a couple of occasions where the AI on friendly tanks would get slightly confused, but they were rare, and most of the time the game went smoothly and without a hitch. I found myself playing it almost an entire day non-stop without realising the time had went by.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who is interested in either traditional simulations, or even just FPS games - this is the perfect balance between the two and may well introduce some new people to the genre.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Game play: 9/10
Longevity: 7/10
Overall: 8/10