The setting is a German farm set in the beautiful Bavarian countryside. Your overall goal is to make money from your farm and pay back your bank loan. When you start the game, its almost essential to do the the tutorials because otherwise you won't have a clue what to do. There are 11 to choose from, the first being ploughing which is hard enough.

The hardest thing to begin with is working out the controls (W = accelerate, SHIFT = start engine, E = Jump out/in, S = reverse, A = left, D = right). You also need to press "Q" to attach the tractor the plough and "V" to lower it although once connected, the keyboard instructions for the plough are displayed at the top of the screen. It's very hard to plough up and down in straight lines but you basically have to cover the entire field until the Tutorial reaches 100% complete. The problem is if you go over a certain speed, the plough detaches and reattaching is about as thrilling as watching paint dry.

It's generally very boring stuff and doesn't really make you feel like trying the other tutorials. To brighten things up, I ended up driving out of the farm and taking the tractor on a suicide mission along the main road and crashing into what looked like an old Skoda. The tractor was beached on top of the Skoda and the game was over but for a few minutes at least, I felt alive.

If you start in Career mode then good luck to you because you're basically on your own and it's impossible to know what to do if you haven't completed the tutorials. There's also a multiplayer mode where you can team-up with wannabe farmers from other countries. However, we found that connecting to any of these servers wasn't easy.

The graphics in Farming Simulator 2013 are more functional than realistic - vehicles only leave a mark on the ground when you are ploughing etc and the farming equipment, from real manufacturers like Case IH, Deutz-Fahr, Lamborghini, Same, Horsch and Amazone, are as slow as you would expect but still don't feel realistic. You can crash your tractor into a barn without damaging it for example and the environment in general still feels stale. For a realistic simulator about farming, a more dynamic environment would be much more suitable. The sound effects and ambient noise are fairly realistic however.

As it stands, work in Farming Simulator 2013 is pretty dull although educational for kids or just those interested in the realities of running a farm.

Farming Simulator 2013 isn't a massive improvement for the series. The graphics still look out dated, and the overall experience is lacking character. If you enjoyed previous entries, you'll like this, but it doesn't offer much for anyone else.

Download Farming Simulator 2013 1.3.1 in Softonic

Realistic graphics

This driving simulator puts you behind the wheel of a powerful truck and entrusts you with several different missions. Euro Truck Simulator's activities consist on taking cargo from one place to another and getting paid for the delivery. Saving enough money you will eventually be able to buy better and faster trucks to be able to work more and earn more money.

The main idea in Euro Truck Simulator is quite original. We're used to car, motorbike and even airplane driving simulators, but not many focused on trucks. The game features excellent, highly realistic graphics and gives you a real taste of life on the road as a truck driver. However, the steering is extremely sensitive to the slightest touch and there doesn't seem to be anyway to change this.

Boring gameplay

The major problem however is that Euro Truck Simulator becomes a boring game quite easily. Whether it is the repetitive sound of the engine, the slowness of driving a truck or the lack of real action, the game definitely lacks excitement. Maybe if you could play your own music on the truck's radio, or get into some more action by delivering illegal stuff and occasionally being chased by the cops, Euro Truck Simulator would be more exciting.

Euro Truck Simulator is also extremely similar to German Truck Simulator and UK Truck Simulator on Windows.

Euro Truck Simulator is a pretty original game, with excellent graphics but it gets boring quite easily.

Download Euro Truck Simulator 1.4.2 in Softonic

Bus Driver is a surprisingly fun simulator where your job is to transport passengers around an urban environment. Your mission is to stick to a timetable while obeying traffic rules and making sure you don't upset or injure passengers. Bus Driver is supposed to be all about realism however - there's no game as such, although there are five different levels of ability and you get bonuses for obeying rules of the road and sticking to your timetable etc.

There are five buses to drive in a huge city environment with various districts, 30 routes, and varying weather conditions set at differing times of day. There are different bus types such as school bus, tourist bus, sight-seeing tour bus and even a prisoner transportation bus. The entire driving environment is made even more realistic courtesy of an AI system which 'learns' from your driving habits.

The vector graphics are a bit blocky and basic and the gameplay can get quite dull at times but for anyone who is a fan buses or just driving sims in general, Bus Driver is a lot of fun.

Download Bus Driver 1.5.2 in Softonic

This demo of Farming Simulator allows you to experience two missions: a Time trial and Hay bailing. The first is just a one-lap, one-man race around an obstacle course, and in the second you have to carefully pull a hay baler over cut wheat, to make bails of hay. There are medals for fast times, although it's not too hard to get gold.

The physics of Farming Simulator feel pretty basic. The tractors don't move very subtly, and the models don't move with suspension, so they look quite old fashioned. The graphics overall are functional, but won't worry the Need For Speeds of this world. The sound, similarly, is acceptable but nothing more. The slow-paced action is set on a sparsely populated and quiet island.

Farming Simulator is pretty basic in terms of what it offers. There is no attempt to make any of the farming fun, so if you don't enjoy tractor driving, Farming Simulator won't change your mind. For farming fans, it's a fairly varied game, but spoiled by it's outdated presentation.

Farming Simulator is just what it says it is, as long as you think farming is alll done on a tractor!

Download Farming Simulator 2011 for Mac in Softonic

That's why it's refreshing to see that the UN have created their very own game in the form of Food Force. Food Force puts you in the daunting position of dealing with a major crisis in the Indian Ocean, on the island of Sheylan. You're part of a UN team to step up the World Food Program’s presence there and help feed millions of hungry people. The first thing to note before you get going is that Food Force is a big download at 215MB so if you're thinking of giving it a whirl, start downloading it now. The file is in the form of a disk image which you must then copy to your hard drive.

You start of as a team rookies with six missions to complete. It doesn't seem you can progress beyond these six missions - I don't think you can become Kofi Anan for example - but as with all new jobs, you start at the bottom. Each mission requires you to deliver food to an area in crisis. The missions vary in task from Air Surveillance where you have to locate the hungry, creating some kind of balanced diet on your modest budget, air drops and finally, teaching the community how to farm for themselves.

Throughout Food Force, you are prompted by various assistants as to where to go and what to do to achieve your goals. Some are undeniably more fun than others - for example, Air Surveillance is considerably more fun that planning a food budget but throughout, the level of realism, graphics and playability are very good.

Food Force combines a good cause with a surprisingly involving, varied and challenging game. This is gaming with a wholesome side.

Download Food Force 1.1 in Softonic

Go beyond the confines of the Earth and explore the Universe with this planetarium-style computer program. It�s fascinating to see 3D simulations and navigate through the solar system and all the stars outside it.

What does the sky look like from Vega or the Pleiades? Finally, you can experience these beautiful views for yourself.

5 million stars. View the components of binary stars such as Alpha Centauri, or the 'Double Double' in Lyra - orbiting each other over hundreds of years.

That said, there are so many functions and options you can get lost! I liked the Solar Neighbourhood feature which allows you to select the distance in light-years and see all the stars discovered so far, and of course rotate them to better understand their spatial postition.

Especially in this field, a navigable 3D rendering of the Universe will be much more effective than pages and pages of text.