Review

Gauntlet (2014)

One of my favorite arcade games is back in the limelight once again. Well, at least amongst the PC gamers looking for a classic, tough as nails, cooperative dungeon crawling experience!

For those who don’t know, Atari’s Gauntlet was one of the first multiplayer hack and slash games back in the 80’s. Played from a top-down view, it featured four fantasy based heroes – the Wizard, Elf, Valkyrie, and Warrior – who’s only goal was to find the exit out of the labyrinth-styled levels. Players would need to find keys to open doors, avoid deadly traps, and battle all sorts of monsters. It was basically what you’d expect from an early version of this genre. What made it stand out, however, was how difficult it was to play. Enemy spawning generators would need to be dispatched quickly to keep from being overwhelmed, the life restoring food items can be destroyed by overzealous players, and the one boss character (Death) can’t be killed by normal means. Oh, and did I mention that your health bar slowly ticks away regardless of whether or not you take damage? Yup, things were tough for our four heroes.

With so much stacked against you, it would have been easy to write this game off as an unfair, quarter-eating time sink. But the game was just so much fun to play though! Atari made sure things wasn’t taken too seriously. They removed any remnants of a story and added in a wise-cracking narrator who’d let everyone know who destroyed the food or took down that last generator. It offered simple yet addictive gameplay with a dose of humor. Playing with three other friends almost always turned into a good time. Heck, I often made new friends playing Gauntlet; the high difficulty made it easy to bond with random players because you had to stick together. It was a game that would suck you in and wouldn’t let go until you were out of quarters. The same thing can be said about Arrowhead’s modern version recently released on Steam this past week.

This new-ish Gauntlet features a lot of what made the previous games great, while reworking what the later titles in series did wrong. The result is a remake that really isn’t a remake, but awesome nonetheless. For one, take the four heroes. In the older games they offered different play styles – the Elf was the archer who would attack from a distance while the Warrior was the close ranged melee fighter. Arrowhead further differentiates each hero by giving each of them a unique control scheme*. When playing as the Warrior, all of his moves are tied to the face buttons. Pressing X caused him to slice and dice with his sword while hitting B sends him into a violent spin that decimates nearby enemies. The Valkyrie is similar but using the right Analog stick raises her shield, knocking back foes who try to strike her. Pressing B will send her shield flying, ricocheting around the room Captain America style. The right analog stick for the Elf is his main attack; think twin stick shooters where pressing in a given direction sends projectiles, in this case his arrows, that way.

The Wizard (who is now my favorite character) uses the face buttons to change spells. X, Y, and B are tied to the elements of ice, fire, and electricity, respectively. Once a spell is chosen, you cast them using right analog just like Elf uses his arrows. What’s cool about the Wizzard though is how many spells you can come up with using different combinations of button presses. Taping Y twice (fire + fire) allows the Wizard to hurl fire balls in quick succession. Taping X twice (ice + ice) will garner a slow moving ice beam that freezes enemies on contact. Tap X then Y (ice + fire) will net an ice ball that creates a mist that slows down movement for all but our heroes. He is quite versatile.

One would think that the four different button configurations would lead to confusion. In Gauntlet, it actually strengthens the gameplay. This set up makes sense once you’ve had a chance to play as each character; being able to shoot quickly and easily in any direction as the Elf makes him better than his 80’s counterpart. Not only that, it kind of reinforces who each hero is and how they lend their talents to the group. Because you can’t mash buttons to attack enemies, it makes sense not to run into a horde of them using a ranged character.

Now we can’t talk about a Gauntlet game and not mention the level design. Everything you’d expect from this series is here. Gates that requires a key to open, swarms of monsters flowing out of generators, a charismatic announcer, a couple of simple puzzles, etc. They are really well designed. The only bad thing I can say about them is that I wish there were more to play through. There are a decent number of levels which with harder difficulties, could require some lengthy sessions to complete the game. But on normal, it didn’t take long to run through them, though if could have just felt that way because I was having so much fun.

Outside of the old staples and interesting control schemes comes some of the newer elements. Each character has a list of passive upgrades that unlock after completing challenges. These challenges range from killing a certain number of zombies to eating a large amount of food. When it comes to the upgrades themselves, they don’t really change the gameplay in terms of new skills or abilities. They do help take the edge off of harder modes though. For instance, after you’ve eaten a certain amount of food, over the course of multiple gaming sessions, you’ll unlock the passive ability that grants life-over-time; you’ll receive small bursts of health for a few seconds after the initial health boost from food. There are also relics that can be bought with the gold found in each level. These items grant special abilities that require potions found in each level to use. They’re great to use when in tight spots and because they aren’t tied to any particular hero, you can mix and match them to create suitable “builds”.

Visually, Gauntlet looks great. The graphics have a stylized, pastel look to them and even though the camera is pulled back the developers left in a decent amount of detail. You can see a zombie’s tiny head get sliced off and roll on the ground as well as pick out the new hat your Wizard just unlocked. Speaking of costumes, you can acquire new gear to stand out amongst other heroes. These skins, like the rest of the game, are simple yet well designed.

All and all, I believe Arrowhead did a great job. And even though they didn’t reinvent the Gauntlet wheel, this particular reboot is one of the best I’ve played. It’s easy to jump in and out of a game regardless of whether you’re playing locally, online or a combination of the two. They’ve even added leaderboards for bragging rights. The only real issue I have with the game is that you can’t seem to join a game once the action starts. Sure, you can quickly join up when your friend is at the lobby screen. But if you join a game and for some reason get dropped, you can’t jump back in until the host goes back to the lobby. This can be frustrating, especially when trying to beat a tough level with only half your group; it isn’t impossible to beat the game with only two players, it just makes things difficult when you started with four and can’t get replacements. This flaw isn’t enough to ruin the game but it is worth noting considering the strong cooperative nature of this title. Besides that though, everything else is groovy. Tell your buddies to get online, order some pizza, and have fun slaying monsters…just don’t shoot the food!

*I played using a wired controller. While you can play with a keyboard and a mouse, a controller is more suited for this type of game.