A staple of the 2.0 era. Back in the day, this level was everywhere and constantly talked about, mainly for how epic of a bossfight this level contains. When 12 year old me first saw this, I was so unbelivably shocked. Though this level has not held up as much as I was hoping.

It mainly comes down to the gameplay here. While I couldn’t call it bad, it feels very weird for the most part. It’s learny focused, which I very much enjoy, but parts like the start of the drop and both duals have gameplay that feels kinda awkward to get down. However, they still get very consistent when you figure them out, so I can mostly forgive it. Also, the difficulty of the level drops so hard in the last 25%, it oddly becomes so much more straightforward and easy compared to the rest of the level, which necessairly isn’t a bad case here, but makes it feel a teeny tiny unbalanced, tho the balancing in this level is far from unbearable.

Visually speaking, it shines with the boss a lot, this didn’t become an icon of 2.0 for nothing after all. The design of the boss is very cool, and the animations on its attacks are very fluid. I also like the detail of its hands having indicators on them for each of its attacks, its a really nice visual touch. I guess the only thing I would like to see more is a bigger variety of attacks from the boss, but it is still very high quality, and some of the best looking to come from 2.0. The overall block design, while looking a bit empty for Lazer’s standards, still fits well, as it is primairly inspired by Deadlocked (I mean, why else does it have “locked” in its name lol). And it lets you take in the glory of that awesome boss even more.

If you can handle some weird parts in the gameplay and get consistent at them, I think this is a level worth experiencing. Despite not aging as well as I expected, its a good and enjoyable time imo.