Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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PC Releases

Assuming your local computer store isn't under six feet of water at the moment, this is what you can expect to find there...

For those of you living in parts of the UK which haven't been submerged by the recent floods, today sees several new PC games hitting the shelves, although only a handful of them are likely to cause any real excitement... Pick of the week is undoubtedly "Crimson Skies", an arcade-style flight sim from Microsoft which sees you taking on those nasty imperialistic British types (ahem) and airborne pirates in an imaginary 1930s America full of hot-rod planes and wild adventures. Sadly Microsoft's other big hit-in-waiting, "Metal Gear Solid", has failed to appear for the second week running. Maybe next week?

Meanwhile EA Sports have released "F1 Manager" just in time for the end of the Formula 1 season, giving you the chance to take Ferrari to their first world championship in twenty years. Hasbro are doing the whole retro thing again this week, with "Frogger 2" and "Breakout" appearing through their much-worn Atari label, but it's pretty much all downhill from there. "Airline Tycoon" and "City Trader" aren't likely to cause much of a stir, and to be honest we really don't have a clue who made them. Neither are we likely to care. Also coming out of nowhere is "Rome : Caesar's Will".

Thanks as usual to Nemesis for pestering the folks at the Victoria branch of Electronics Boutique in London to confirm those releases.