Blue Ribbon
£2.99

Budget game inlays rarely go to great lengths to explain their games, but Wulf pack is very poor. 'Use your skill to ascertain the location of the U-boat', it says. How?! Are we expected to interface robocop-style into the computer to find out where the sub is? Or do we just guess?

Wulfpack is set in a WW2 scenario; essential supplies from America aren't getting through to Europe, because the container ship convoys are being wiped out by the Nazi U-boats. You take command of a naval destroyer to stop them! Each time a container convoy gets to port, you get closer to the required total; each time a U-boat manages to destroy a convoy, that total increases.

Get close enough to a U boat, and the depth charge screen comes up; guess how deep the U-boat is and fire a charge accordingly. When you run out of charges, you must return to port for more. When the convoys eventually succeed in getting the supplies through, you go on to the Allied invasion of occupied Europe on D-Day to aid the naval bombardment and beach landings.

If that sounds boring, it is. Wulf pack is very dull; little skill is involved in the first part, and hence, it gets very annoying when things go wrong for no particular reason. Another very poor offering.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

He's strong, firm but fair, extraordinarily good-looking and what's more he's been put in charge of the Bargs again. Jonathan Davies, my man...

Blue Ribbon
£2.99
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

Narrowly missing the 50th anniversary of World War II, Wulfpack attempts to simulate submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Ahem. In fact it does nothing of the sort, and reminds me of those thrilling Basic programs that used to sell for £4.95 and were so popular in about 1983.

Your job is to sail around the Atlantic seeking out U-boats with your sonar. Having found them the screen flips to a side view where you have to guess the depth that the sub is sailing at and set a depth charge appropriately. Also to be considered is the D-Day Invasion, which sounds extremely exciting although I'm afraid I didn't get that far.

The piccies are what really let things down. I thought UDGs had been extinct for years, but there seem to be loads of them scuttling around the garishly coloured screens here. Although some of the ideas in Wulfpack are okayish, it's been programmed so primitively that coldly ignoring it would seem to be one's only option.