Euro Truck Simulator

You bring me back from the dead for one last review and what do you give me to look at? A game in which you drive a lorry full of tomatoes to Lyon. I thought the whole appeal of games was that they let you do things you can't do in real life, such as shooting a Nazi or jumping over a grinning daffodil and landing on a moving cloud. Not so here. As glamorous exercises in escapism go, Euro Truck Simulator is on a par with fishing hair from a plughole.

The gameplay: pick a truck, pick a cargo (Sugar! Electronics! Frozen food! It could be literally any pedestrian item you can think of!), then drive it from one location to another. Along the way, you have to fill up at petrol stations and nap. You also have to obey traffic lights and avoid crashing. You don't get to do any of the other things truck drivers are famous for, like wanking over porn in lay-bys or knifing 19 year-old hitchhikers, so the tedium quotient remains fairly constant.

No Rides For Rides

Most of the time you're just trundling slowly down a dull motorway. While you're driving you can look around the cab by sliding the mouse about Yet when your eyes alight on the empty passenger seat beside you, it can get poignant The road is lonely and monotonous, and there's so little to do you end up staving off boredom by holding negotiations with God in your head.

Then you arrive at your destination, at which point there's an infuriatingly fiddly bit where you have to reverse the trailer into a docking bay. I left the experience more resentful of humankind than when I started, which indicates this game isn't aimed at me. The score reflects my take on the damn thing. Add 50 points if you want to drive a truck through some dull sections of Europe. Like a prick.

Unbridled, Screaming Optimism powers our Scania truck along the first leg of our epic journey - from the PC offices in London, down the M20 (itself a part of the European route E15, road fans) to Dover. Reaching speeds of 55mph, this isn't the fastest section of our trip but it's easily the most relaxing. The drastically scaled-down, leafy scenery rolls by, and the gentle rocking of the cab has a lulling effect In our Sussex-induced stupour we miss at least one turn-off and career headlong into oncoming traffic for a good 40 miles. Frantically flashing our headlights and swerving from lane to lane sees us through safely.

Catching the ferry to Calais brings us to the Continent, and from there we plot a route through Frankfurt in Germany before trudging onwards to Warsaw in Poland. It should be noted that, for the authentic trucking experience, we acquire some cargo in the form of a container of ice cream.