In article , (Peter
Hovorka) wrote:

Is it a realistic thingy or just a shoot'em'up?

Definitely not a shoot'em up, even with all the cheats on. I tend to get
my kicks from simply flying around enjoying the amazing scenery and
excellent (give or take the odd quirk) flight models. Combat is... well,
I've never been a big fan of BVR missile fighting, so I'm probably not the
best to judge. In all modern-era sims I tend to avoid long range missile
combat and ground pound instead or get close and dirty with guns and short
range missile. (I should probably stick to IL2 FB, but I love the Flanker
as a bit of aeronautical engineering... it has soul :-)

Ground attack is limited in Lock-on by the lack of ground radar in any of
the planes. And there's precious little in the way of SEAD (hunting down
anti-aircraft radar basically) capability apart from the rather quirky
Su-25, which is something of an acquired taste. But you can get quite a
lot of satisfaction from dumb iron bombing, and the A-10 carries
Mavericks, though they can be a bit tricky to fire accurately from
anything other than short range (for me anyway :-)

On the whole Lock-on is both amazing and disappointing. Thrown in a
dynamic campaign and some decent ground attack capability and you'd have
something very special. But even as it stands it's a sim which rewards
patience and gives back whatever you're prepared to put into it. Of course
that's not everyone's idea of relaxation, but then this is flight sims
we're talking about :-) If you want fun and few headaches then Secret
Weapons Over Normandy is a better bet.

My love/hate relationship with Lock-on continues, with evidence
(incriminating or otherwise) to be found at...
http://www.andrew.mcp.dsl.pipex.com/lomac.htm

Whatever its limitations, I think Lock-on deserves a place on any flight
sim enthusiast's shelf, and there's plenty of advice and support available
at places like SimHQ and the Ubi forums.

Andrew McP