There was a day, deep in the mists of yesteryear, when Gauntlet was THE multiplayer arcade experience. As fantasy warriors and mages made their way deeper and deeper into underground dungeons, the frantic shooting and casting of spells was balanced beautifully with the constant need to find food and keep your energy up. Many a summer's day was whiled away in my tender youth, using my elf to blast away at the darkness' denizens. Midway's taken the Gauntlet series into the land of 3 dimensions - how does the GameCube port compare?
Gauntlet's 4 player experience stays true to the series. You and 3 of your friends battle against the usual Dark Overlord-type in order to restore justice to the throne, etc. The storyline just gets in the way of Gauntlet should be all about - hacking at enemies and leveling up your character. Each character has their strengths and weaknesses, and as you battle through the game a proper party balance is needed between stronger and faster characters for success. The gameplay is typical Gauntlet, with tons of button-mashing required. Raise your statistics at the store between levels, then do it all over again. Potions help recover damage sustained from combat and traps - and combat can be done from range as well as in-close.
Frankly, this port just doesn't do the series justice. The frame rate is choppy, much choppier than the PS2 version. Music and sound effects are uninspiring, serving to just fill in the blanks in the audio as opposed to bringing the players into the fantasy realm - with the exception of the old-style demands for food, which are always good for a nostalgic chuckle. Graphics are very weak in comparison to other GameCube titles, and that's not due to the style of the genre. Animations are stilted, the textures vary in quality from poor to good, and the character models themselves seem dated.
As a showcase of the GameCube's technical abilities, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy doesn't measure up to other titles in the system's library. More importantly, as a game, it smacks of mediocrity. Try it out as a multiplayer rental with friends, but I can't recommend it for purchase when the superior PS2 version is available.
