Lockdown certainly wasn't next
on my list of games to play, but I'm yet to
play a tactical shooter, or any of the Tom Clancy
titles. So, I was curious about what kind of
games they actually are.
Lockdown is a tactical shooter;
which I always assumed would require a lot of
tactics rather than run-and-shoot gameplay.
I don't know if this was just a bad example
of a tactical shooter or not, but it just seemed
like another realistic shooter to me. There
were no tactics to speak of, apart from pressing
the space bar every so often to get your team
mates to catch up. The main difference in gameplay
between other shooters, is that you get a limited
amount of ammo on each mission, so you need
to make your hits count. Anything below 20%
accuracy and you'll end up running out and have
to resort to the useless handgun (thankfully
I never had to).
For me, this means constantly
pearing around corners with my zoom scope and
sniping enemies in the face. There's not much
running into the room guns-first, because a
couple hits and your dead. It's much more meticulous
and strategic in the way you shoot enemies.
Unfortunately, the enemy AI was useless. You
can quite easily snipe out a room of enemies
from the door frame without them even shooting
at you. And when they do, they'll often then
just run off.
Your team mates AI is decent
- they don't get in your way and certainly don't
rush in. They usually only ended up with a few
kills each after each mission, compared to my
60-80 kills. So your still a one-man-army, with
just your friends along as company you might
as well say. Just the way I like it.
Hostage AI was a problem though.
On one level they refused to move at all and
I had to restart. They also had a tendency to
stupidly run ahead of you right into enemy fire.
Another problem were the weapons.
You get to pick from around fifteen weapons
which one you want to go on the mission with.
Yes, you only get one. I played with the same
rapid fire rifle with scope for the entire game.
With such a limit on ammo, I saw no point in
using a machine gun, and shotguns would be far
too short range. It would be nice to have had
a couple guns to switch between. On the other
hand, it did take some focus off looking for
ammo and health during the levels.
The graphics of the game looked
good. The textures and lighting were consistently
great. The levels were well designed in most
areas, with just some of the design looking
a little bland. Nevertheless, this is supposed
to be realistic, so real buildings aren't necessarily
laced with intricate detail. Despite the realism
achieved in the design, it still looks very
good most of the time; helped along by the good
textures and lighting.
Overall, Lockdown really isn't
that different from your other realistic shooters.
The only tactic is your approach in hitting
your enemy in the head before he sees you. Therefore
I enjoyed all several hours of Lockdown.
