Gauntlet Legends

"If you have a short memory and like lego blocks, Gauntlet Legends is for you."

Well, this is my first review. I’ve always found reviews that give out harsh judgment to good games to be the most accurate, so that is EXACTLY what I plan to do, and with excruciating detail. EXPECT LOW RATINGS! So, to get a little practice, I found a game that was essentially fun in its concept, but had plenty of problems to warn the general public about. The game: Midway’s Gauntlet Legends for N64.

In GL, you and your friends (you cannot have fun playing solo for more than 30 minutes of monotonous killing) can choose to be warriors, valkyries (high-defense female warriors), wizards, or archers, plus some secret characters. You have to save a wizard’s castle from an evil demon, just because you are strong enough to do it. This lack of a real plot, though, causes little trouble for the average Action-RPG player, as I’ll explain later. This is an ARCADE game being transferred to the N64, and this is where the problems come.

***Gameplay***

Basically, there are three ways to kill enemies: short-distance hacking, long-distance shooting, and the lame magic I will elaborate on later. It is supposed to be action-packed. All I see is a whole lot of the exact same thing, disguised as action by Midway. You kill a group of Lego block enemies in one of the limited ways, then get treasure and step on a switch. Then you kill more enemies, then treasures and switch, then enemies, then...locked door?! Obviously, that vague letter in the chest didn’t help. You go back, cursing yourself and beating your head against a wall, because you know that you have to search every wall, treasure box, and dark passage for a tiny red switch, and the only action is that of avoiding weak traps. After tons of walking, you find the switch, and run all the way back. Time to repeat all steps until you are at the exit portal. You then realize that you only completed one objective at that level. This may be one of those levels where you only need to do one thing? But you check anyways. After a long trip, you don’t find anything you could have missed, so you run back and go through the portal to get laughed at for failing. You get told what you missed in a voice you barely understand while your character spins for a while. You then go back to the level to get it so that you can go to the next one care-free, because you just know that the next area HAS to be fun, right? WRONG!! Just the exact same thing with a different environment.

So what IS good? Well, it is a fun thing to do with friends. NOT to be the main event, though. It’s fun for an hour at a time, and slightly addictive to those who try their best to forget how little you actually do. It also has simple controls, though you may have trouble at first with the turbo. The shopping is probably the hardest to control part of the game, using the <gag, cough> C buttons. You may also have trouble moving in multiplayer. Two players have a distance they can be from one-another, so if some poor sap gets stuck on the bottom of some stairs, he (“he” is easier than “he/she”, sorry ladies) stays stuck until other players get out of their battle frenzy to help him. I’ve also experienced a camera problem in multiplayer where the camera will pan off of everyone and your players can’t move for a while.

If the game keeps your attention long enough, you may also go into some cool boss battles, though their contrastingly high difficulty may anger you. I won’t give spoilers and elaborate, but bosses are interesting, and aren’t quite as much of a chore as the average level.

If anything kept me going, it was the RPG concept. I like making powerful characters just to see them chop through enemies like air. Unlike other RPGs, though, there are NO new moves/magic to learn. Sorry, Final Fantasy fans.

Grade: 20/50

***Story***

THERE IS NO PLOT! You have to help a wizard get rune stones, glass shards, and weapons to kill Skorne, an evil demon who sends out other demons to rule a mountain, desert, town, and castle. No character development, hidden plot, plot twists, etc. Luckily, not a big part of the game at all. It is the multiplayer gameplay that builds this game’s foundation.

Grade: 2/10

***Graphics***

This game has Graphics?! Sorry, Midway, but I have no choice but to bash on the graphics in great detail. I will TRY to point out some of the good things, though. What’s good? The bosses are relatively well-made, and so are the main characters and items. Also, the wizard’s 3rd level Turbo Attack is pretty neat. Well, that’s the good part. Now it’s time for a well-detailed and sadly-negative description of the game’s horridly under-developed graphics<small gasp for breath>. It’s bashing time!

First, and most importantly, the 3-D graphics are S-A-D. Enemies come in many varieties, and all of them are blocky and hard to look at. Everything from the green mystery humanoids at the beginning of the game to the rats made of Lego blocks to the blob monsters made of red sticks to the…well, you get the idea. They all eventually look the same--crappy. At first, I thought that the simplicity of the enemies was meant to get rid of any slowdowns. If so, they failed miserably, because there is SLOWDOWN.

So, to get rid of slowdown, you may want to blast your foes with magic. Little do you know that “magic” is just a poorly made ring of (element goes here) that radiates from you. Stupid Final Fantasy got it wrong: They thought magic should be interesting, and should come in varieties. Whether it’s fire, lightning, acid, or whatever, they all look the SAME!

Now for the multiplayer camera that looks like it is being controlled by a drunken monkey. The camera is hard to control, because you don’t directly control it. It follows you in a way that keeps all main characters on-screen. Unfortunately, it will often not show the path that lies ahead very well, while showing plenty of the old path. This is a particular problem if the players are unequal in playing ability and have trouble catching up.

This game has horrible lighting. If you are walking down the path and you hear your player shout “Ah!” chances are you just got bit by a rat. I don’t know if they did it on purpose to create a scary mood or something, but you may just find yourself using magic bolts or blasts from your familiars as methods of lighting your path. Yes, it’s that BAD.

Finally, there is one glitch I must point out. In the one room from which you access all the levels, the camera may pan away from the players in MP mode. It happened to me often enough, and I’m surprised Midway didn’t catch and fix it before its release. I just don’t see effort.

Grade: 5/20

***Sound***

The music is generic and unmemorable, but not bad. It does its job of setting the right mood--leave it alone! The sounds are also generic, and also do their jobs. There’s the grunts and screams from being hit, reasonable explosions, and other things. Nothing major here.

It is the voice acting that hurts the game. You dread to have to hear the wizard as he tells you about rune stones or anything, because he sounds like a growling dog and a drunk put together. The valkyrie sounds like Jim Carey after inhaling helium and getting kicked where it hurts. When anyone eats, they tell you how good food is.

Grade: 4/10

***Playtime/Replay Value***

Well, this part is entirely up to you. I’ve heard of people finishing in under 16 hours, alone (how do you play and beat this kind of game alone?). But if you like powering up your characters like I do, that time can easily be expanded to any amount of time imaginable.

On the surface, one would think that a game with many areas, four open characters, and such good multiplayer capabilities would have a lot of replay value. It does...to an extent. First of all, the only real difference between characters is which of the three methods of killing they prefer, so you WILL NOT see anything new but a few hidden characters (you collect MANY coins to get them, not worth the effort). This lack of anything new is especially true when you play it with a friend or friends who have different characters. The reason you may want to play again would be to do something old with your friends as a last resort. There are no cool looking moves to see, no hidden moves, no hidden stages, NO NADA!

Grade: 5/20

***Summary***

Not a very memorable game, but is a nice game to play with friends for about an hour.

TOTAL: 36/100 = 4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/03, Updated 01/09/03