Published: Monday, 16th March, 2009 12:00pm

Lock's Quest

by Max Smith

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Nintendo DS

Every once in a while something special will appear that challenges everything you expect to see in a computer game.

Now, tower defense style strategy games are not my usual cup of tea. They generally tend to annoy me after the first few levels and it"s very difficult to get back into the swing of things once you"ve put them down.

Locks Quest is different. Taking control of a young Archineer (or defender) named Lock you find yourself swept up in a fight with the evil Clockworks of Lord Agony, whose only goal seems to be to control or destroy the human colonies standing in their way.

Using the DS stylus and touch screen combination to full effect the game doesn"t fall into the trap of being a one trick pony, allowing for many different forms of, essentially, mini games to defeat the advancing enemies.

In battle mode, while sliding the stylus from side to side will help with "ratcheting" to fix your defenses, you can also dive directly into a fight with your opponents, often given the chance to use numerical combinations to do more damage as they progress. Collecting Scrap and Source from your various battles will allow you to create more powerful turrets, more sturdy walls and other useful battlements to augment your sites defenses.

The AI system is pretty intuitive as well, meaning that after some smaller probing attacks of your base, they will learn where you are weakest and mass at the gates – which means by the time they throw a "boss" at you – the bosses being the generals of Lord Agony"s army, they"re usually in full swing, making them a little harder to defeat.

With enough of a story to back what is a very entertaining and enjoyable game in itself, you might ask if it has one final element that makes it so much more memorable. In the case of Locks Quest it is a simple one. The music. This is an area where 5th Cell have gotten it spot on. Like most games on the DS I started playing this in silence as to save on some battery life. Why would you need the sound when any speech is splashed across the screen for all to see? Oh how wrong I was, turning the sound on led to the game taking on a life of its own with a score worthy of Zelda.

All in all, Lock"s Quest is a game that came as a pleasant surprise. If you enjoy tower defense games, you"re looking at one of the most definitive available. If, like me, they don"t appeal to your usual gaming tastes? Give it a whirl, you never know, you might just like it.

4 out of 5 stars