Review

With it's huge screen, four primary coloured joysticks and booming speakers boldly shouting out lines like “Don't shoot food” or “Warrior, your life-force is running out”, the Gauntlet arcade machine made a huge impact on my life. Some excellent home versions followed but every attempt to restart the series since has fallen flat. This remains a title that hasn't produced a good game since the mid-1980s. So, Arrowhead, no pressure.

Gauntlet 2014 is, I am pleased to report, a thoroughly decent update. It actually seems to have been made by people who understand the appeal of the original. So there is a light sprinkling of sound effects and nods to the original game throughout. Fortunately, Arrowhead are also savvy enough to realise that a remake cannot survive on nostalgia alone for very long.

You still get to choose from the four heroes, each of whom offer a different style of combat. Warrior and Valkyrie are both melee fighters who excel at close-quarters combat, one offers slower, more powerful attacks whilst the other is faster and more agile. Elf uses his bow and arrow to keep enemies at a distance, making the game more like a twin-stick shooter. Wizard has a variety of magic spells at his disposal and is definitely the most challenging character to use until you learn how to use the spells effectively. In single player, the character you choose can radically alter how you need to approach the game.

The game is structured so that it seems overly difficult at first, particularly if you are playing solo. For the first couple of hours you will die, a lot, and every time you die you lose all of the gold you have collected. Gold is required to buy magic attacks and the only way to bank your gold is to finish the current dungeon, something which took me around 20 attempts. Everything that you do in the game gets added to your Mastery stats, so even if you don't complete the level your effort is rewarded. These will periodically unlock new abilities such as a greater chance of finding gold in crates and extra health regeneration when you eat food.

This is an enjoyable game and well worth the relatively low price but I can't help thinking that I would enjoy it more on a console. I'd wager that the developers know this too as the game even informs you at the start that it's best played with a control pad.

About the Review

Platform

PC

Developer

Arrowhead Game Studios

Publisher

WB Games

Released

23rd September 2014