Lock On: Flaming Cliffs 2

Our first attempt at landing was too fast with too high a sink rate and broke the undercarriage. Rather than the instant crash that can make some flight simulators very frustrating the damage was accurately modelled.

A slightly better - though still too fast - landing burst a tyre on the main undercarriage. There's even a sound effect for that and the controls are affected with the aircraft sliding off to one side regardless of rudder correction.

Other challenges include carrier take offs and landings with the Su-33 and in-flight refueling.

There is a selection of training missions that cover the different aspects of each of the different aircraft. Once you are comfortable with the missions, there is a campaign for each aircraft. A logbook keeps a record of successful attacks and landings along with any medals that are awarded.

More casual gamers shouldn't be put off by all of this realism as it can be turned down to make the game more fun and accessible. As well as the usual infinite ammunition and invulnerable modes, there is an easy avionics option that gives a full 360 degree view of targets.

There is a very detailed manual of around 320 pages supplied as a PDF. Sadly the days of long printed manuals that come in the box seem to be over but you can order a printed copy for £20. Given the depth to the game, this is probably worth the cost, the aircraft can be made easier to fly and more information about other aircraft and targets can be displayed.

There is a very large map available for the region, which costs £16, or you can download it as an image file by clicking here (it is a 138MB file so will take some time to download).

Some training videos are supplied but only for the A10 and Su-25 aircraft, though more can be downloaded from the Flaming Cliffs website.

It's a shame they are not supplied as standard but as the F15 videos alone weigh in at 410MB, it's clear how this would have been pushing the limits even of a DVD for installation.

The good thing about the training videos supplied on the DVD is that you can take control at any point. It's quite effective to watch them a couple of times and then do it yourself once you know what's going to happen.

Ultimately Lock On: Flaming Cliffs 2 is a very engaging game that offers many of hours of gameplay, largely depending on how much realsim you want to fly with, and thanks to that customisability there is enough to keep the interest even of players who don't want to get involved in all the realism the game has to offer.