By the way I noticed that on my Lock Blaster (I don’t know if it’s just mine or all of them?) it has a rather silly typo in one of its dorky, edgy, already-hilariously-inaccurate bits of decorative text. Apparently the Lock Blaster is battery-cgarged. I did such a huge double take and looked reeeaaal close and straight-up that is just a capital G. That shit says “CGARGED”. Amazing.

I’m not angry or dissatisfied because of this, for the record, if anything it’s even better for it. I find it funny that some part of the process of making this design might’ve involved literally typing the text in, causing a typo like this to even be a possibility. Good stuff.

Time for another foam dart blaster review! The Lock Blaster from X-Shot was announced about 2 and a half months ago, and with it being lever-action I was naturally very excited to get my hands on it. That being said, I actually bought this (for 15 USD) 2 days ago and didn’t unpackage it until today. I’ve been sorta busy and sorta just not feeling like writing a super detailed description of a plastic gun blaster. Now, though, I am ready…

So let’s get into it! The Lock Blaster has an 8-dart revolving cylinder, a lever-action priming system, an extremely detailed coat of paint (being part of X-Shot’s “Skins” series, like the Pro Longshot), and a rather absurd gimmick I’ll explain soon. It comes with 16 full-length darts (the blaster is full-length only but can easily be modified to fire half-lengths) and typically hits a muzzle velocity of around 80 feet per second (while a typical Nerf dart blaster hits closer to 70).

Anyways, about that gimmick… see that combination lock on the underside of the blaster? It’s not a decal. There’s a QR code on the blaster that gives you the combination needed to operate the blaster’s safety switch. If the safety is on and my blaster’s combination isn’t set to 726, I’m unable to turn the safety off and prime the blaster. The trigger still works, though, so getting the blaster stuck with the spring compressed isn’t a risk. Also, when the safety is off, the numbers on the lock are stuck in place, so you won’t accidentally move them around and lock up your blaster while you’re actually using it. As unnecessary as this gimmick seems, it’s pretty cleverly designed to not mess up the operation of the blaster itself. I guess the idea (according to one ad I’ve seen for it on Zuru’s YouTube channel) is that other people can’t “get into” your blaster. I don’t know why that’s a concern, but uh, whatever! Neat gimmick, doesn’t get in the way.

I’m a sucker for lever-action, and weird priming mechanisms in general, so it’s easy to see why I’d like a blaster as bizarre as this one. The decoration on it is… well, I have mixed feelings about it, which I think are positive overall. The back portion of the blaster (the grip and whatnot) seems to follow the aesthetic design of the Pro Longshot, which is to say it looks amazing. The part with the big chains painted on it, though… I don’t know, I’m not a huge fan of physical objects just being flat decals like that. Is it supposed to look like the blaster actually has chains around it? I mean, I also think that wouldn’t look great, even if they were 3D objects, but still, it’s just kinda odd to me.

The extremely detailed X-Shot Skins deco looks best when it’s used to provide color to actual details in the shape of the blaster’s shell, which the Lock Blaster also has plenty of. And I think the little “warning signs” all over this blaster and the Pro Longshot are kind of adorably edgy and dorky and I kinda love them. Just putting a whole-ass picture on the side of a blaster, though… doesn’t appeal to me as much. Oh well, it looks kinda cool, and I enjoy the look of the Lock Blaster overall. For only 15$ it’s pretty nuts how good it looks, honestly. It’s gimmicky and weird and that’s all I wanted it to be. :)

It’d be freaking amazing if the looks of X-Shot blasters could be combined with the build quality of what Dart Zone makes, though… and, uh, Nerf is neat too, I guess. Buy a Villainator.

I just purchased the Zuru X-Shot Pro Longshot for 30 dollars and it’s uh it’s pretty okay it’s amazing I love it. I’m not sure where to begin with this thing so I’ll just go over what was included like I always do.

In addition to the blaster, the following are included:

• A 15-dart full-length magazine
• A 15-dart half-length magazine
• An adapter for the half-length magazine so it can fit
• 20 half-length darts
• 20 full-length darts
• 2 iron-sight attachments that can slide around on the rail atop the blaster (one of which has an adjustable piece)
• A 2-piece barrel attachment, one of which is threaded to increase accuracy (I don’t know much about this but I believe it’s called a SCAR barrel (I don’t remember what SCAR stands for) and it works by making the dart spin as it leaves the blaster, which is better for some reason. I’ve heard that the SCAR barrel coming with this blaster isn’t actually that great but it’s still super cool that it comes with one at all, since as far as I know that’s always been a piece that had to be modded into existence before now)

The blaster itself has the following features:

• It’s a bullpup! This means the mag well is behind the trigger instead of in front of it. This isn’t that big of a deal, isn’t objectively better or worse, it’s just neat. I think this is the first bullpup blaster I own!
• An adjustable (but non-removable) shoulder stock. In the pictures above I have it set to the longest option, since I’m over 6’ tall
• A safety switch, as is the standard for pro-performance blasters. Works identically to Dart Zone’s safety switches
• A vertical foregrip which you pull back and push forward in order to prime the blaster. The priming action is ridiculously light and smooth for how strong the blaster is.
• Slamfire! This means that you can hold the trigger down and then prime the blaster, and it will automatically fire on completion of the priming action (pushing the foregrip back to the forward position). By holding the trigger down and then priming the blaster over and over, you can fire shots very rapidly at the cost of accuracy (on account of how much you’d be jostling the blaster without taking the time to line up your shot).
• The ability to insert/remove magazines while the blaster is unprimed. Nearly every mag-fed blaster I’ve ever used has required me to pull whatever priming handle thing to the “back” position before doing this, so this is a very new convenient thing for me.
• A lever on the side of the blaster near the trigger that, if you have a half-length mag loaded, acts as a mag release for just the half-length mag, and not the adapter. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck how does it do that?? That’s so fucking cool

There’s… really a lot to love about the Longshot. The main thing that sticks out to me is the deco, which looks amazing. Other brands are so stingy with how much they beautify their blasters (yes, Dart Zone, even you, I’m sorry) but X-Shot has some kinda pact with the dart devil that lets them make their blasters detailed as hell. I was so convinced that there was gonna be some kind of catch with this blaster, because there was no way a blaster could look this good and perform this well for this price point. But there just… isn’t one, as far as I can tell. It’s actually that good.

It’s kinda strange and confusing that they called it the Longshot, though, since the Nerf N-Strike LongShot is already a thing… from like… over a decade and a half ago? I believe Nerf’s LongShot was sort of iconic in the hobby because of how great it was for modding, so it’s a hell of a name to “reuse” like this. To be honest I think X-Shot is doing more than just that to kinda poke fun at Nerf with their recent announcements and releases but I won’t get into that too much. It’s kind of a whole Pepe Silvia thing anyways.

This is my first X-Shot blaster and I’m extremely impressed. It has a ton of features, comes with a few extra darts (which is really nice! I don’t know if they’re good darts because I haven’t seen any comparisons but they seem okay), looks amazing, and only costs $30. This one’s a 10/10 for sure. Normally I’d say “buy a Villainator” here but like, honestly, buy a Longshot. It’s that good.