- Windows
- Flight Sims
- DVD Box
Product Description
Feel the power of commanding a modern jet fighter! Filled with intense campaigns, realistic flight modeling and flexible game options, Lock On will provide unlimited game play action to both novice and veteran flight sim fans. Includes 20 single missions and 4 campaigns, each with its own background and story…. More >>
Installed a demo. Don’t know what the guys who posted below are talking about but im running demo on my rig with following specs:
Athlon 1700+
ATI Radeon 9500 moded to 9700
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
513MB of SDRAM
Game settings: resolution 1600X1200, 2x AA, 4x AF
The game is smooth. Geting on average 30 FPS. Physical model is great, graphics is great both environment and landscape (i come from Ukraine so i know how landscape is supposed to look like there:)) The only thing i didn’t like was the damage model. But i think it’s going to be fixed by the release date.
Of course it is not an arcade game. It is a hard core flight simulation with everithing that this entails. You gotta learn how to fly.
Everyone who is passionate about aviation should get this game!
PS. If your demo isnt running great, check out ubisoft’s forums. You can learn how to set up you hardware, drivers, and the game right so it is playable.
Rating: 5 / 5
Well I was reluctant to pick this up. A friend advised me that it didn’t run on his top of the line PC. He said that it was fine until clouds and weather affects were added and then trouble occured. Anyway eventually I found it in a discount bin and decided to pick it up. It runs brilliantly on my machine, absolutely flawlessly. My box 2.8Ghz, 1Gig Dual Channel Ram, ATI 9600 Extreme. I was so impressed I went and bought myself a set of X45 Saitek HOTAS gear. How much fun is this. Blowing away bandits in an F15 without ever having to touch the keyboard. The sound is only in stereo unfortunately so I can mix up my EAX settings to run it on 4 speakers but a 5.1 setup would have been nice. The graphics put MSFS2004 to shame. It took me a week or so before I was comfortable flying the Eagle and there are more planes to go. The game has a great level of depth and I printed off the Flaming Cliffs manual which helped some too (all 262 pages). Campaign builder takes a little time to figure out – like the whole thing really, but this isn’t a console game this is a complex piece of software. Saying all of this the game isn’t for everyone, it takes time, patience and an attention to detail to get the most out of it. I spent a week or so readjusting settings till I was happy. Neverthless this has helped my love and interest of flying and quite frankly this piece of software is a hobby for me rather than a game.
Rating: 5 / 5
The game does exactly what it says it does, it imitates modern air combat. Learning is half the fun and despite a small manual anyone can look on-line with a little effort and find tons of useful information to learn more. The search button on forums is a key thing to understand. Some people complain about stability but the game has never ctded on me once. I run an AMD XP2800+, Leadtek 6600GT graphics card, and 1gb ram. I run everything on high except water (which is the real fps killer along with mirrors). Tons of fps mods are even available if you need them and look for them. I previously ran the game on medium with my XP2800, 512mb ram, and a GfTi4200 and it ran decently as long as everything was medium and water was low. It’s all about tweaking, which can take time. The key is to tweak it and then keep at it instead of giving up because once you get cozy with the game you’ll start to have the real fun. Getting over the initial learning curve it difficult but I think is probably well worth it if you care to understand some of the top fighters of our time.
Rating: 5 / 5
If you are not technically minded, don’t buy this game. If you dont know the difference between a directX 9 card and a directX 9 compliant card (one works with DirectX 9 but does some of it in software and is useless for many modern games), dont bother. If you have a computer that is not correctly configured, don’t even think about it. If you expect to run the game and play well within an hour, stop reading now.
Now for the rest of us, the ones who are sick of console games and know how to build their own machines so that they run well, irrespective of the age of the components. The ones who are prepared to sit down and actually learn how to use a program, and know that a third party manual is the only way to even begin to do justice to this simulation (it is *not* a game)… This one is for you.
Runs well on my 9500 pro (heavily overclocked, with an artic cooler mod), XP2000+ processer and 1Gb RAM and with all of the simulation settings set to high except water quality and view distance (set to low and medium respectively) – as per the manual recomendations (hint for all the folks with low frame rates!). Mine is not a high end machine, but I took pains to work out what the most stable drivers were for everything before installing this game (catalyst 3.7 for the video, plus latest VIA sound drivers for my onboard audio), because I knew it would be a demanding game… not on hardware, but on software configuration. Mid range hardware seems okay on all the latest games, but it is drivers and general software config that causes problems, ddespite what some of the other reviewers seem to think.
Know what? It worked first time, and it worked well. I’m enjoying going through the LOMAC manual (the one published by Digital Aspirin), learning how to play this beast, and when you get into the zone it is absolutely great.
For example, in one mission, I am tasked with shooting down a valuable and well protected AWACs plane that is patrolling off the coast. It is protected by a pair of F4s and there is a patroling squad of F16s nearby…. all of which totally outclasses and outguns my pair of MiGs. So its a case of tactical flight – flying undetected with stealth (passive non-emitting sensor modes), and a BVR attack on the AWACS from behind, placing the F4s in a position where they are furthest away from my escape vector when I de-cloak and initiate the attack. Following my stike on the AWACS, I head for the deck running, using the mountains as cover and using the low level air density to significantly cut missile range (yes, it even models that!). A long chase follows, with the two F4′s and my wingman buying it in a short but fast dogfight, when the F4s elect to cut their altitude for speed and catch up. But I make it home, low level all the way to avoid lock-ons by the F16s, who were following at high altitude taking BVR pot-shots.
Exhilarated is the only word I can use when I made it to my side’s air defences, and watched the F16s turn and sulk back home… Mission Accomplished!
Now that’s gameplay.
S
Rating: 5 / 5
While the system requirements may claim that a Pentium 800 processor is sufficient to run this game, take it from me (and from an avid community of Lock-On fans): You will need at least a 3Ghz class Pentium and the best video card money can buy to have this game perform smoothly. With that aside, strap in and ready yourself for a tour de force of corrupt textures and random game crashes (and believe me, there will be lots of those). And when you do happen to see a peculiar artifact (such as a string of out-of-place polygons coming from the sky, or the ground) rest assured, it’s not some superweapon of the future; It’s just yet another doodad that shouldn’t be there; A result of Eagle Dynamic’s saddening execution of game that was compiled with an underpaid pseudo-programmer and grossly undertested.
As for the missions and gameplay, it’s a proven combat simulator. Don’t expect to jump in and start firing missiles away. It will take a few hours to learn and effectively use the weaponry on these aircraft. While I have personally only trained on the A-10, I can say that the few times I managed to finish a mission (in those rare cases when an unexpected game crash didn’t reboot my computer) the attention to detail paid to avionics, flight dynamics and damage models was accurately modeled. This is by no means an arcade-themed shooter. Training sessions are thorough enough to teach you the basics needed in effectively using each airplane to the best of its abilities.
While Lock-On comes off as a promising title, its wide array of bugs that plague the game keep it from becoming an memorable gem amongst combat flight-sim enthusiasts. Eagle Dynamics (the game’s developer) has been slow in turning around patches in hopes of fixing some fatal flaws (as of 2005, four years after the game’s launch, only 2 minor patches have been released).
With such a unlucky combination of flaky code, (forcing the player to re-play some of the missions time and time again due to crashes and freeze-ups) Lock-On should remain in its developer’s shop until it matures as a product worthy of a public release.
Rating: 2 / 5