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He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man in his... top secret experimental jet fighter? Strewth, Biggles was never like this! Looking at the game, it's just as well...

The boffins down at War-U-Like have invented a new toy: a high-powered supa-dupa combat aircraft that can outfly and outblast anything in the air, and make a bigger noise doing it. But no-one's yet sure how it will handle. What's needed is a sucker - sorry, brave volunteer - to test it out.

The powers-that-be decide to send you on a suicide mission - nice peeps, aren't they? Your task is to blast your way through 36 missions, creaming a set number of enemy FX85s to advance to the next level.

Armed with a limited amount of fire-and-forget homing missiles and a machine gun that's about as much use as Robert Maxwell's swimming instructor, you need to blast away for all you're worth to beat the ridiculously short time limit.

The trouble with G-Loc is the software was originally designed around its arcade hardware. Looping the loop and executing mid-flight victory rolls might be sensational on the coin-op, but without that gyroscopic cabinet thingy the effects are nowhere near as impressive, and the thinness of the gameplay stands out like a Spectrum owner as a computer fair. You can't turn the plane to any degree, you can't chase an enemy After Burner-style, and there aren't even token attempts at flight simulation - you can't even crash the damned thing, however hard you try). All that remains is a painfully sparse blaster involving very little skill.

Don't get the impression that it's easy though. Coin-op cabinets don't come cheap, especially snazzy ones like G-Loc - to keep you putting the pennies in and cover the arcade-owner's costs, time limits were hellishly short. Alas, US Gold have retained this irritating quirk, and you've only got three credits to play with (I tried putting a 50p piece into my Commodore when I ran out, but it got jammed between the keys). Also, by the time the first wave of baddies hit the screen, your time's half over!!!

Game presentation is appalling, with no intro screens and no end-of-level messages. When the required number of enemies are blown away, you're plunged straight into the next level with no celebration or respite. The sound is pretty cruddy (Beep beeeep - Boom, Khrrrr - Boom), and the graphics - I think I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves! Presumably the programmers cut down on frills in order to cram it all into a single load, though I don't know why they bothered - no-one will ever get past Level Ten anyway!

G-Loc the coin-op only worked because of its fast, exciting graphics and stomach-churning gyroscopic cabinet. Stripped of these elements, the gameplay's shallowness is all-too-apparent. Samey levels, awkward controls and some of the most non-interactive flying ever seen on the C64 make G-Loc a game to avoid. 40%

Now I know what 'G-Loc' stands for: Great Load Of Crap. In the arcade, the only thing that really draws the crowds is the R360 cabinet. Take that away and all you're left with is a bog-standard dakka, dakka, whee, boom sort of game. The graphics are very dodgy, the attacking craft are a mess of pixels that only vaguely resemble airplanes.

Also, control of the plane is oversensitive, so turn one way or t'other too fast and you lose it. There's little variation in the missions, a slight change in scenery was all I could spot. There's nothing I hate more than a game that becomes repetitive within the first five minutes, and this is almost the time it took me to become terminally bored. G-Loc is a big flop. 30%

Presentation 20%
There isn't any! Probably due to the single load.

Graphics 35%
Blocky aircraft, featureless backdrops, confusing FX.

Sound 39%
Like R2D2 reciting Shakespeare.

Hookability 45%
Okay for a while, but its faults soon stand out.

Lastability 20%
Too little depth, too little skill make this a bit dodgy.

Overall 35%