Chillingo’s penchant for publishing dual-stick shooters returns with the release of Lock ‘n’ Load ($0.99), a content-rich title developed by GameLab that hits all the right notes for the genre. While a lot of that content is initially locked away a bit tighter than I’d like, the gameplay, visual-style and presentation make up for that setback, leading to a game well worth checking out for the dual-stick shooter crowd.
Lock ‘n’ Load puts you in the role of a hockey-mask wearing protagonist taking on an evil magic-wielding girl whose minions trampled his garden bed. As you can imagine, the tone of the game is very tongue-in-cheek and does a great job making fun of itself. While the story obviously takes a backseat to the gameplay, I still enjoyed it more than most other dual-stick shooters, including the twist at the completion of the main campaign. Still, what’s more important is content, and Lock ‘n’ Load certainly has a lot of enemies to throw at you.
You’ll be taking on those hordes of minions with your choice of three weapons (you’ll have to unlock two of them) through mostly standard DSS gameplay. I say mostly because Lock ‘n’ Load does a great job spicing up the gameplay with good plot pacing and a variety of mini games. You’ll do collection quests, first-person carnival shooting – even a Space Invaders-inspired stint. Of course, there’s also a ton of opportunities to simply mow down the mobs. A second, harder difficulty is also available, along with a second unlockable campaign (and challenge missions) that focuses more on gameplay than story.
Visually, Lock ‘n’ Load looks impressive with a wide variety of backdrops and character models. I was particularly impressed with the assortment of environments used across the campaign, each with their own graphical effects. In addition, the game runs at a good frame rate and looked exceptionally nice on my iPhone 4S. Relatedly, I thought Lock ‘n’ Load did a great job with its auditory aspects, with the music setting the mood appropriately and decent voiceovers accompanying the story cutscenes and combat. It did get a little annoying hearing your character repeat the same catchphrases over and over but in general I thought the voiceovers did much more good than harm.
One of my few complaints about Lock ‘n’ Load is the way it handles unlocks with its in-game currency. Every upgrade and unlockable requires cash, which can be randomly dropped by enemies while playing the campaign or purchased en masse via IAP. As is becoming custom, while you can earn a decent amount of cash through a campaign run it won’t be nearly enough to unlock all the content.
Unfortunately, I think the amount of cash dropped in-game should definitely be adjusted. I ran through the entire campaign (with several restarts on some missions) and didn’t even earn nearly enough cash to unlock the first tier of upgrades. When you include all the challenge levels, skins, and second story mode, players will end up having to rerun through completed levels many times before they can earn enough cash to unlock everything.
On top of all that, unlocks don’t appear to transfer between iOS devices (unless you have the all-encompassing ‘premium pass’) meaning that simply spending a few bucks on cash to unlock extras isn’t going to cut it if you want to play on multiple devices. Also worth mentioning is a crash bug that’s affected some users. An update with a fix is already submitted, and in the meantime if this is affecting you turning on Airplane mode should work as a temporary fix.
Even if you have an adverse reaction to IAP, Lock ‘n’ Load still offers a decent amount of content with more that can be eventually unlocked (even if it takes a long time). When you combine that with the excellent visual style and content diversity, Lock ‘n’ Load becomes a highly recommended game. While we’ve had our share of good dual stick shooters, it’s rare to find one as well-rounded and content-rich (even if you have to unlock a lot of it). Gamers remotely interested in dual stick shooters owe it to themselves to check out this title.
