Simulators are one of the earliest PC game genres, and remain compelling experiences to this day, even if they’re not as popular as they used to be.
I like all kinds of combat flight sims; the MS Combat Flight Simulator from 1998 was something special, and I’ve had some similar fun in IL-2 Sturmovik. The newest civil air sims are pretty great too, I’ll pop on a podcast and make a flight. They’re particularly cool in VR.
I’ve also found the MechWarrior games to be fun, but I’ve only played 2 and 5. I got to play a bit of Steel Battalion with the full crazy controller at a con a few years back, and that’s got to be a lot of fun once you really know what you’re doing.
So what’s your favorite sim?
Heavy Gear 1 and 2. So much fun when multiplayer ever worked.
Cultist Simulator. (half joking 😂).
Big fan of Cities Skylines in city simulator genre.
Not super in-depth like some of these other games but I love Snowrunner. I can count on 3 fingers the number of games I’ve spent over $100 on the game+ additional content in my entire life. Civ5, Civ6, and Snowrunner. It’s such a relaxing game but can definitely be difficult as well. Also i can play music at the same time and not miss any story because there isn’t really any story.
Anything by Janes Combat Simulations.
Euro truck simulator 2! I have lots of hours in this game, playing date and night. At some point I had a Logitech wheel with pedals and shifts, it was so damn good!!!
My routine was to get a long route through graphic and small roads, listening to radio for hours.
My parents got me a copy of Harrier Jump Jet by Microprose one christmas. I can’t even begin to imagine how many hours I spent on that game, both actually playing it and studying the manual for it. Still have the manual actually but the floppies are long gone.
After that I got every Microprose sim I could get my hands on, F14 Fleet Defender was probably my favorite after Harrier.
Then I kinda lost interest in simulators until Arma came along, spent years where I hardly played anything else.
Nowadays though ETS is pretty much the only sim I play.
VTOL VR is incredible
For me, my favorites are:
RAH-66 Comanche for flying sim.
Wolfpack (from Brøderbund) for submarine sim. I believe it is also free on archive.org. (Added link: https://archive.org/details/msdos_WolfPack_1990)
Euro Truck Simulator 2 for trucking sim.
F1 2019 for racing sim. But it pretty much requires a wheel and pedals if you want to get really good, which does add to the cost.
EDIT: added link
Wolfpack I played up and down 20 years ago. I may check it out again.
Great! Wow.
IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946
Elite Dangerous and i also love old school mechwarrior 2
B-17 (intellivision)
F19 (Atari computer)
Jumbo jet (Atari computer)
Elite Dangerous
DCS (Digital Combat Simulator)
Tons of well-simulated combat aircraft. IL-2 is probably the closest simulator to it.
DCS is what I play most of the time - particularly the Viper. I help run the unit I play with as well.
Elite Dangerous is the only other sim I play.
Look into falcon BMS
Derail Valley Simulator. I like my trains.
I should get back into that one. I played some in early access, and it was fun.
Depending on how long ago it was, we’ve had a couple of updates recently. You can now paint all your engines, and there’s a ton of gadgets
Falcon BMS. It’s a mod of falcon 4.0 from the 90’s. Best combat flight sim out there. DCS is prettier, I guess, but, overpriced garbage by comparison.
