Lock On: Modern Air Combat (PC Games, 2003)

This game is its own little sleeper hit, while it may not bring the large selection of aircraft, as you would see in a Janes game, its a wonder in its own little way.

Bringing in a beautiful display of scenary in great detail, as well as the Jets themselves. Realistic sounds and flight physics, will keep you on your toes as you run your missions.

The controls are abit tricky at first, but once you've got the hang of them, you will become the master of the skies.

For those not so advanced pilots, it even inculds a few training tracks. showing you step by step, how you would do a task. such as switching radar modes, from guns to missiles. How to acquire a target, and general dogfight usage. Even how to take off and land, as well as air to ground targetting.

Pros: Great photorealistic graphics on alot of things, from the jets, to the ground and water (depending on your settings.) Custom Mission building, and campaign modes, keep the replay value you high, as well as online play through ubisoft's desktop lobby, as well as the ability to turn on stunt smoke(which alot of games lack.).

Moddable! There are plenty of mods you can add to this game, such as changing the jets into the Blue Angels F-18's. Or adding even further realism to the games weapons, and adding high res textures to the planes and clouds.

For those amature pilots that happen to be a fan of the Mig29 and Su's, they even toss in a handy "Snake" button..perform the manuver as if you were a pro! on demand!

Cons: Without applying any of the patches, this game can be very buggy, and may crash depending on how your system is set. it is a memory hog requiring from 512 to up to 1gig of memory to run it smoothly. Any graphics card over a Geforce 5300 shouldn't have any problems running this game, at around medium settings. Small selection of fighters. Campaign mode is a little bit dry.

Why i enjoyed it:
First off.. any game that lets you turn on smoke, so you can do a aero display..hands down is awesome. Grab a few of your buddies, and you can have your own stunt team..get a ingame recorder like gamecam or fraps..and you're good to go!

The graphics are just amazing, i've played alot of flight sims, but this one made me go WoW, when i clicked the settings up to full. and added a few mods to it, to tweak it abit more. skimming the water at 10feet and watching it kick up behind me, as i pull off the deck.. brings me much joy.

Oh! and fun with the A-10..not usually a fan of air to ground, but targeting something from inside of the hud, on the jet's camera, then firing a mavrick while switching to the missile cam to watch it explode..has never been so good. Also dropping cluster bombs across the buildings in the game, just to set them on fire.. a nice added feature.