A Successful Upgrade to an Old Classic
First we need to consider, as an exception, the fact that Gauntlet began its humble life at a quarter ($0.25 USD) for about five minutes of game play. And, if you were lucky, and you had enough life bonuses, food and score increase within those first few minutes and managed to continue getting more lives, you could play Gauntlet for hours on a single quarter. Historically, then, Gauntlet has been around for at least a decade in one of several forms over the last 10 years. Gauntlet – Seven Sorrows is not a separate game, but the latest evolution of the original arcade version.
In Gauntlet – Seven Sorrows you have four types of characters to choose from, just like the original arcade version. In the decade or so that Gauntlet has been around, the colors have not changed and you can still have a Green Wizard or a Blue Valkyrie if you so choose. The other two characters you are able to choose from are an Elf and a Fighter.
This most recent chapter of Gauntlet, Seven Sorrows has been out for about two years now. I was able to pick it up new, for about $20.00 (USD) – which is quite a reasonable price considering that a movie, today, usually runs around $18.00 (USD) and gives you about 2 hrs of entertainment value.
After purchasing it and firing it up, we were able to play for two or three hours, and we still haven't cleared but about three levels and taken out two of The Sorrows.
Gameplay is intense action hack and slash performed in real-time. All player characters now have seventeen different combos they can perform in order to more effectively and efficiently destroy whatever monsters might be foolish enough to stand in the way of a couple of Immortals. Of course, there are monster generators; anyone who has ever played Gauntlet knows that it would not be Gauntlet without the monster generators. The generators, as always, are the first thing that need to be taken out, unless you want to reload your Immortals in mid-level from the last quick save point. These monster geneators typically generate 10 to as much as 30 monsters (multiplayer mode) every few seconds, depending on the difficulty of the level you are moving through.
Monster generators are not the only place that bad guys come at you from. Some will actually teleport right on top of you even when all the generators have been taken out. The bad guys are not the only ones that can teleport.
Your characters are no longer bound to walking or running in order to get from one place to another. One of the Wizards' special moves is a sort of teleport and the Valkyrie can cartwheel, flip or tumble from one side of the screen to the other with the mere flick of the right analog stick.
This very quick movement also allows you to move across the numerous traps that are layed out through every single level without taking damage unless you stay still too long. This quick movment can allow you to move right in the midst of a group of bad guys and blast them in mere seconds or they can allow you to move to the nearest quick save point, even though that might be smack-dab in the middle of a group of bad guys.
Quick save points will autosave your characters' level and experience whenever the character can manage to access them. The number of quick save points varies depending on how long or how short the level actually is.
Quick save points, for lack of a better term, allow you in the middle of a battle, to reload your characters from the last quick save point while whomever you are playing with (multiplayer cooperative) deals with the monsters.
One of the things that has really stood out is the fact that while one character is heading off to take care of flipping a switch or turning a crank, the other player, in a cooperative mode, needs to be covering their partners back. Thus it is not at all unusual to have one of your characters knocking off the bad guys while the other takes care of whatever food needs or actions need to be taken care of.
Food is plentiful in Beginner mode, but if your not careful your character will need to load again if they don't keep on eye on their health bar. There is also a new magic attack that all characters have access to. It is called Mana Blast, and will destroy 15 or 20 monsters in a single blast.
All characters start out with five attacks, four basic and one special. These attacks, as the characters go up in levels, are expanded upon, blended and customized to the character you are playing as your levels rise. If you want a new attack or combo, beyond the basic five combos, you can spend your gold and purchase those new attacks. Weapons and armor are automatically updated as you find the various updates throughout the levels. The highest weapon or armor update is capped at four levels of enhancement.
Load times are negligent. That is, hardly noticeable, most especially when you are reloading your character in the middle of a heated real-time battle where there is absolutely no load time once the commands to do so have been entered.
Stats available are Damage, Mana Regeneration and Health. As you incrase your levels, you receive points that you can allocate to any of the three stats. At the levels we have played so far, the amount of available points is based on a number of statistics that the game actually keeps and tallys whenever a level has been completed.
These statistics include the number of combos your character has successfully completed, the amount of damage your character has done to the bad guys, the amount of damage you have taken and the amount of monsters that your character has taken out. Those statistics are only about half of the statistics that the game uses to determine how many points you are allocated for stat increase after you've completed a level.
At the end of each level, your game progress can be auto-saved. You also have the option, as well, to save your character after each level has been completed.
What about sound and graphics? Again, we have to take into account that this is a sequel to the earlier versions of Gauntlet, and, when comparing with the earlier versions, this is far and away the best evolutionary sequel to Gauntlet that has ever come along. Most especially where sound and graphics are concerned.
Gauntlet has not ever been known to give the player extensive camera control. Primarily, if you have played Gauntlet in the past, because all the levels are predefined and very linear from start to finish.
In Gauntlet – Dark Legacy, you did not have the option to rotate the camera directly. Gauntlet – Seven Sorrows gives you the ability to raise or lower your perspective if you choose to. Default camera settings gives you a sense of being in the melee, and not floating around some place watching sprites dance across the screen. The same applies to Gauntlet – Seven Sorrows. The ability is there to manipulate your view of the party, but it requires practice to get a feel for. Even so, typically the player is so busy covering themselves or their team member while keeping their health up and destroying hordes of bad guys that concerns about camera position or rotation turn into more of an afterthought than anything directly related to the real-time battles themselves. Gauntlets – Seven Sorrows is about real-time hack and slash and can not really thought of as a “dungeon crawl” as there is too much going on to even come close to anything that even remotely resembles a “crawl”.
The visual segues between levels are dark, two-dimensional, sepia frame segments which are underscored by the narrative of a Ghostly King as he speaks of what has passed to bring our heroes to this place in their lives. This segue is usually followed by a fully animated and full colored 3D CGI sequences which actually doubles as a setup for the next level as well as giving the player a sense of the level they are about to enter. These sequences usually inform the player where they are and what their goals are for the next level. Load times are minimal.
The characters and monsters are fully animated 3D figures. Movement is fast, and without a hitch; most especially when you are teleporting or tumbling around the screen. That is, there are no delays or stuttering in the frame rates and the levels are all fully rendered 3D levels as are all the real-time battle sequences, including the attack sequences.
The soundtrack within a level is usually very good and tends to give the player a sense of mood for any given level. When run in Surround Sound the soundtrack tends to fill the room with environmental sounds and the rattle of armor and metallic clank of weapons as yet another monster grunts out their last breath or screams in defiance as they die from yet another devastatingly brutal attack.
In keeping with the legacy of the earlier versions of Gauntlet, the story line for Gauntlet – Seven Sorrows does have more depth than Gauntlet – Dark Legacy or the earlier sequels of Gauntlet. For Gauntlet – Seven Sorrows, our heroes have been released from an imprisonment caused by their king, who, out of remorse and guilt, freed them from the imprisonment that he had forced on them. Now, it is our heroes desire and duty to free the world of evil.
Yes, it is a classic Gauntlet theme, however, the methods used to accomplish that end are for more complex and intense than they have ever been before.