Gauntlet Legends

A lot of people were probably awfully excited when Midway decided to bring Gauntlet to the PlayStation, and for the most part their game is intact. The world of Gauntlet is colorful, littered with treasure chests that can be unlocked with keys gained from slaying beasts. The four main characters are back--Valkyrie, warrior, wizard, and archer--with the promise of hidden characters as well.

Unfortunately, the PlayStation version of this game lacks a four-player mode, which will certainly disappoint fans of the coin-op, but two-player mode can be fun. The real weakness of Gauntlet Legends is its one-player mode, which becomes old rather quickly, so players should have someone ready to join in. --Robb Guido

Pros:

• Fun two-player mode

• No four-player mode, to the disappointment of fans everywhere.

Also, I think that taking away the decreasing life was a GOOD thing, and that alone made the rating for the PSX version worth at least 3 stars. That was nothing but a cheap ploy to make you spend way more quarters than any reasonably skilled player should have to. There are far better and more realistic ways to create a challenge than to have characters lose life for no earthly reason. That's just lame, and it's something I've always hated about the Gauntlet series. With that feature finally removed, the game is now actually an adventure, not the "rat in a maze" type of thing it used to be.

The music on this game is also very good, particularly the main theme that plays during the menu screens and the music on Warrior's Mountain. The boss music is cool too, even with the modernized tracks slipped in there. Some music, though, was just annoying, such as the first of the Town stages with the Zombies.

There were a few disappointments, though. I don't think there was enough challenge, especially in the boss battles. I was also disappointed that the Spider Queen boss was missing completely. The only thing that made the stages more challenging is that they became increasingly more maze-like (not good in my opinion--makes things extremely repetitive and unnecessarily tedious) and that the enemies simply moved a little faster and took more hits to kill.

Also, the graphics were rather poor when compared to the arcade. It's impossible for any console to completely match an arcade version, especially not in the graphics or animation department, but I think the PSX could have done much better than this. The FMVs were fine, but outside of that, all of the heroes are very blocky and pixelated, especially on the character selection screen. Once you get into the game though, the graphics become less of annoyance because you're not really paying them too much attention.

The absence of the 4-player mode was a weakness as well, but two is also fun. I don't think the PSX version had enough challenge even for one player though, let alone four.

Overall, those expecting a perfect arcade-to-console port should look elsewhere, but this game was still fun, and good enough to stand on its own merits.


Sweet!!!   May 26, 2001
 2 out of 9 found this review helpful

I think this game is like, so sweet and you need to buy it! This is a fun game and it's really addicting. If you don't buy this, then you is crazy!!!


Patience would have paid off   May 1, 2001
 1 out of 4 found this review helpful

Very, very disappointing. The main problem with this game is the fact that while the arcade version was a challenging, sweaty-palm action game, this has virtually no challenge at all. In fact, I beat the game in two weeks with all four characters at level 99 as the secret characters. This was put out six months after the game broke into arcades, and apparently more time should have been given it. Midway should have learned something from the previous editions of gauntlet on the nintendo, which actually kept some of the thrill of the arcade versions. Recommended only to diehard fans or inexperienced players.