User Reviews (1 - 11 of 101)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Absolute Dreck

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: April 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

These are sad days for flight sims. Gone are the days of Jane's F/A 18 and Falcon 4.0, the days of the truly hardcore sim. What few flight sims we do get are often dumbed-down arcaded shoot em' ups that bear more resemblance to Star Fox than a real simulation. Enter Lock On. It's the latest in what might be considered a dying genre, a fact made all the more shameful by its utterly inferior quality.

Lock On models six aircraft, The A-10, the F-15, the MiG-29, the Su-27/33, and the Su-25, (although the MiG 29 and Su-27/33 are not much different from one another) so one cannot expect the level of avionics fidelity encountered in study sims like Falcon 4.0. Indeed, there are many simplifications in LOMAC, most notably with the radar systems modelling, and that fact alone might turn off many hardcore simmers. Diving deeper into the game, however, the lack of fidelity becomes almost a moot point, because even if LOMAC were as detailed as Falcon 4.0 Jane's F/A 18, it would still be a dull, buggy mess.

Upon starting LOMAC, one will doubtlessly comment on the wonderfully beautiful and detailed graphics. Soon after, one will surely comment on how the game runs like an absolutely dog. Even with the recommended 2.0 GHz Pentium 4, 512 RAM, and Geforce 4 Ti-4200, the game chugs and wheezes its way along like a flabby marathon runner with its horrible stuttering and wildly inconsistent framerates. It's rather difficult to capture a sense of immersion when the game pauses for almost a second to load the explosion effects after scoring a hit on an enemy fighter, or how flying through smoke reduces your FPS to the low single-digits. In order to get the framerates to an acceptable level, one has to go through needlessly convoluted steps such as going in DXDIAG and turning off hardware accelerated sound just so LOMAC doesn't use positional audio (which is quite CPU intensive). The game was clearly designed with only higher-end hardware in mind, and almost no provisions have been made for those with lower-end systems. If you don't have a fully DirectX 8.1 compatible card, you're hardware is not supported, and you can look forward to frequent crashes and Blue Screens Of Death.

Graphical problems aside, LOMAC suffers from one crippling flaw: its utter lack of a campaign system. Oh sure, there's a series of dull, sterile missions canned together that purports to be a "campaign," but LOMAC's not fooling anyone. There's nothing like Falcon 4.0's dynamic campaign here; there's not even anything like Jane's F/A 18 campaign that, although it was not fully dynamic, at least made an effort to be interesting and involving. In LOMAC, you have a series of thinly-linked missions that play out exactly the same each time until you get it right. This has the profound effect of killing whatever replay value the game had, and after the initial "wow" wears off, LOMAC will be quickly collecting digital dust on your hard drive.

There are other gripes, such as the wonky landing physics which allows even the most ham-fisted pilots to put down their aircraft unscathed, the ridiculously useless AMRAAM missiles, the pathetically weak Aegis cruisers, or worst of all, the utter lack of acceptable documentation. LOMAC is perhaps the first flight simulator to come with NO printed manual. There's a little quick start guide which focuses primarily on the mission builder; one has to look on the CD for the, yes Virginia, the PDF manual. The PDF manual that Ubisoft created by copying most of the information from Flanker 2.5. The PDF manual with blurry diagrams that are nearly impossible to read. These days, how can any flight sim that pretends to be "The King of Military Flight Sims" (gag!) ship without proper documentation?

All in all, LOMAC is a frustratingly disappointing product. Don't be fooled by the lack of flight sims on the shelves today. Go find an old copy of Falcon 4.0, or check out the vastly superior IL-2 Sturmovik series. Whatever you do, don't waste your money on this garbage.

Lock-UP is a Rip Off

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: December 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off, this game should be called LOCK-UP. It has more bugs than you can imagine...just hop onto the Ubisoft Lomac "bug" and "tech" formus. You will quickly realize that the problem is NOT your computer, operating system, video card, sound card, joystick etc.....just the sorry and rushed programming. But the biggest RIP OFF is there NO printed manual or keycard (and the short on disk pdf manual is soooo poor) that comes in the box. The Ubisoft website is charging $30.00 EXTRA for an "bound enhanced manual" (naturally on backorder!). Why could not the "enhanced manual" been that pdf manual that came with the game??????. This is really really cheesy!!!! Scrooge could not have done a better job himself!

Not Recommended, Not Fun, Too Many Bugs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: November 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off, the box says Win98SE compatible, yet LOMAC does NOT work on Win98SE for me and for everybody else that I have read on the flight sim forums. It is inconceivable that it was released like this. I also have a XP multi-boot which it does run on. Now for the really bad news. This game has so many bugs, it will be a LONG time before humpty dumpty is fixed and when 6 Ghz machines exist (see below). No dynamic campaign and No printed manual included either. The .pdf manual on disk is poor which is why this game has a steep learning curve. I have a high end 3.2Ghz, 512MB, MSI GeForce 5900 256MB machine and the frame rates stink. The best I get is 20-25fps (at medium detail!!) with little air activity, so those with mid or low end machines best forget this game! There are much better flight sims than LOMAC made in the past 5 years that work, are fun, run great, so I suggest to all to stick with those.

Totally Desaster!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: November 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Hallo,

I bought this sim here in Germany 22.11.03, as an U.S.-release.
I don't know like the german-version runs. Maybe it will be fixed some more.
At the current state the sim is totally unuseable!!
Everyone has criticized Strike Fighters Project 1 cause of it's
unfinished state, thrown on the market. That was right! But believe me SFP1 was really more finished than LOMAC.
There is no way to get this game running on a W98- or Me-system!!
And with XP, bugs, bugs and some more bugs!

After 3 years of production here comes a tuned Flanker 2.0 in an totally unfinshed state, with some new eye-candy (most of it's graphical awards belong to the new graphic-accelerators and not to the program itself), the same graphical interface, and some new flyable planes.
This could have been an addon for Flanker 2.0 few years ago.

Who wouldn't believe it, look in the directory of both games, and you could clearly see the extremly relationship of both sims.

This is not what I'm waiting for 3 years now!

I'm very interested in the next flightsim-desaster. If this goes on, you get the empty box as release, and the cd with the program on it, as first patch for only a few money more!!!

BEST BOREDOM SIMULATOR!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 18
Date: December 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the worst games I've played. I was expecting to blow things up and scream thru the air with awesome special effects, something like in Ace Combat for PS2. Instead, I got dozens and dozens of tedious little keyboard buttons I had to learn (joystick is pretty much useless in this game), slowest gameplay, NO ACTION, boring scenes, ugliest user interface and maps!

Try accelerating/throttling the jets in this simulator; you can barely tell the difference. Feels like you are watching some slow-motion video thru out the entire simulation.

There's no way flying any JET aircraft can be this boring. C'mon, I'm flying fighter jets, not some lame aircraft from Microsoft Flight Simulator! Some realistic simulator this is. However, I think this game is a great BOREDOM SIMULATOR.

I'm running Athlon XP 2800+ 512MB DDR with super fast ATI Radeon AIW 9700! Well beyond recommended system requirements! But this game crawls, with occasional choppy pauses. To top it all off, it takes forever to load. Playing and waiting for this game is incredibly stressful. Biggest waste of my money and time! NEGATIVE 2000 STARS!

I Feel Abused

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: December 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Lets just focus on the fact that this game does not come with any kind of manuel. In fact, you have to buy the manuel for $30 more dollars. How on earth can a flight sim come with no manuel. How on earth can they actually expect you to pay extra for it. Flight sims are complex, involved, and require a lot of commands to learn and play the game properly. Especially this one. The game also requires a pretty high end system to run well, and not to mention its buggy release is completely pitiful. Don't buy this game. If software companies can release a game like this and make a profit, god only knows what we are instore for in the future. And as far as giving this game a chance, ok, wait till its price goes way down, they give us a manuel, they fix it, and the technology catches up. Then maybe it will be a good purchase. This is a complete abuse of a consumers trust.

Ridiculously flawed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I made the mistake of purchasing this software, even after reading the comments posted here. I intended to purchase a relatively high-end machine which, essentially, would run nothing but Win XP and Lock On. Additionally, I added a $500 ATI 9800 Radeon video card to the new Pentium 4 3.0 ghz with tons of dual channel high speed RAM. I was convinced that I would not have the difficulty others have reported here.

WRONG!!

After 2 days of exploring every possible configuration (both hardware and software), I have given up, and concluded that this software probably only runs properly on 1 of every 10 machines it's loaded on.

I sincerely congratulate those fortunate few who have had a good experience with Lock On. But, as we read here and as others have reported, the quality of this program must rank among the lowest ever released by a legitimate software concern.
And yes, I loaded the latest patch from Ubisoft. It just doesn't work.

I am not angry because I dropped $39 on this comical collection of ones and zeroes, I'm mad because I spent so much time coaxing it to work.

My advice is to avoid this one, unless you revel in system crashes, mysterious reboots and frozen screens.

Buy Falcon 4.0

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: January 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I must say that this game does look beautiful. Its visualizations are gorgeous.
HOWEVER, the game lacks in many other aspects. No air to ground radar, (What were they thinking)Substandard avionics, absurd system requirements, lack of realism, no dynamic campaign, too simple, non clickable cockpit & many other flaws.
The game is very good, but it cant be compared with legendry games such as Falcon4.0.
Regardless of its flaws, the game does prove to be entertaining for about 15 hours of gameplay. After that it starts dragging.
It desserves a place in the top 20 combat flight simms but its way down the order from Falcon 4.0.

Lousy, out of date crud...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 38
Date: May 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

To say that this game does not run well because a PC is too slow is ridiculous. I have a top of the line, fastest PC available to date - 4GB RAM. 3.75 GHZ, best of everything.

This game is crap. Although it runs on WINXP it obviously is not designed for it. This handles more like something for an old IBM PC.

The few decent screenshots are JUST SCREENSHOTS and movies and stills do not make a flight simulator or even just a 'shoot em up'.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY, TIME or SANITY. I have had this game for 2 days and it is currently serving as a doorstop.

Anonymous Gamer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: February 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Don't buy it unless you know it works on with your hardware. Don't believe the pumpers on this site - on an AMD2700+ with a 512M memory, GF4 Ti4400 (W98SE) it does not rock. It does not even crawl. It may be the OS, it may be the graphic card, or anything else - I don't care. I buy a game expecting it to work right out of the box. With normal QA such product simply does not leave the doors. No wonder the release date was pushed back so many times. Still, they just could not fix it. Dont' get me wrong, I would love to play it (had the Flanker versions 2 .. 2.5), but got tired after trying for two days.
- With W98SE don't even dream of starting it without the patch (have no idea if anybody made it work on a W95 at all)
- Subsequent starts of the same mission after a while result in slowing down the game to unlpayable. Get out, restart the OS (just the game won't do...) - yes, perfect gaming experience :(
- Frequent crashes of the system (why not when you finally managed to get the bad guys) are just by far too annoying.

Summary - I would have agreed on getting something less shiny but working. It may have been a financial issue, contracts, etc, but the game was released in a pre-alpha stage. If you have the "wrong hardware" you will be disappointed. Just like I was seing this quality after the Flanker :( Whoever made it work on his PC have fun, there is an increasing number of people who feel the brand burned. I will think twice before buying anything from them. It was a bad call.

One star goes for the idea. :(

PS: If it's the OS don't be ashamed to write on the box the requiremens...

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions