Lockout: A Unique Puzzler, But Not For Everyone

In the world of puzzle games, like anything, there’s the good and the bad. Lockout falls somewhere in the middle. It’s somewhat challenging and unique, but certainly has its flaws. For any crossword puzzle or word search fans, Lockout is pretty entertaining, but otherwise I’d say it’s not worth your money.

Lockout is easy to understand: you get clues and have to unscramble the answer to those clues from a wheel of random letters. Each puzzle eventually uses every letter to answer all the clues, so it comes down to knowledge and process of elimination to figure out all the answers. The point of the game is to find the answer to all of the clues in the puzzle as fast as possible. If you get stuck you can be given a letter from the answer in exchange for a time penalty. It’s basically a pretty logical mix between crossword, word search, and word scrambler puzzles.

The game features 60 puzzles with over 500 words, ranging in length from six to eight letters. I’d say this is a pretty good amount of content and will last you a while. The problem, however, is once you finish a puzzle, there’s no point in going back and doing it again for a better time because the answers never change.

If you know the answer to the puzzle once you know it forever, so the game has just about zero replay value. Besides replay value, the game also lacks any global leaderboards, which would be nice so you can see how you stack up against all the other users out there. Some of my other complaints are the wheel is a little too sensitive and the time penalty is way too much. Every clue costs you 20-40 seconds, which is too severe a penalty and can kill your time.

All in all, the game certainly isn’t awful, but I can’t justify it being worth two dollars with all the other great games out there. It could be fun to play with a friend or challenge yourself with a quick game and it has plenty of puzzles, but once you’ve played a puzzle there’s no use playing it again.

It is entertaining and you’ll definitely be challenged- plus it has a nice soundtrack and decent graphics, but Lockout is still pretty featureless and its lack of replay value is a major con. If you’re a puzzle fan dying for something new and tricky, take a look at Lockout, otherwise, spend your two dollars elsewhere.

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