Gauntlet is a top down dungeon crawler game that was developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Warner Brothers. Gauntlet was released in September 2014, and was later ported to the PS4 in August 2015.

You take the role of one of four classes of heroes. Each hero has their own unique play style and special abilities. Personally I played the game primarily as the archer, because I just find the range classes more fun to play, but there are warriors and mages included here too. Your character has a regular attack, a special attack and a more situational ability too. The special attack and special ability all change when you upgrade your weapon. You may find that certain weapons/abilities are more suited for certain levels as well. The gameplay reminded me very much of a Diablo style, in that I was actually able to just hold down my left mouse button which is the regular attack and not let go as enemies just surround you most of the time - your other abilities come with a cooldown so you need to time these for when they are going to be most beneficial. The aim on each of the levels is to reach the end of the stage - there aren't any side quests on any of the stages, it’s purely a dungeon crawler. Throughout each of the levels, you will come across piles and piles of gold. The gold is used in the lobby screen before each level to purchase upgrades, whether it be new weapons, new skins for your character, new relics or new special abilities, and they cost a lot of gold too, so it's a good thing you will come across abundance amount of gold in this game.

The graphics in Gauntlet are OK - they aren't anything special, but they certainly aren't bad by any stretch. The lighting on the darker levels is something I found to be really well done though - you get a sense of being really deep underground and with the helpless lost feeling as you are crawling through empty dark hallways and caves. The lava levels are really pretty too and some of my favourite stages in the game are because of their aesthetic.

Gauntlet is fully voice acted, each of the four heroes has their own individual voice actor; all be it the elf archer can wear very thin on you at times. The narration is done very well too, as it guides you through the plentiful stages on what is happening and keeping the plot going.

We see three levels of difficulty in Gauntlet, Easy, Medium and Hard - easy mode is VERY easy. You should only be playing that if you want to blast through the game for special achievements or just for completion sake. You could also be playing easy if you want to learn a new class. The downside to playing on easy is that you get less gold from drops though - so it is kind of swings and round-a-bouts. The medium difficulty is where you should be spending a lot of your time - this is where you will get a regular amount of gold, and the enemies will be sufficiently challenging. Hard mode should only really be played if you are planning on playing with friends who have a lot of experience in the game, or you have built up a ton of upgrades allowing you to min/max your way through the stages as efficiently as possible.

I touched on playing friends briefly above, Gauntlet is able to be played in a four player co-op environment, each player takes control of one of the four classes and you play the game as a team. The enemies are all scaled up depending on how many people are playing - most people will say that co-op is the only mode you should be playing Gauntlet - whilst I may say that will be true, it is certainly not wise to be playing with PUGs (pick up groups from quick queues). If you do want the multiplayer experience in Gauntlet, then play it with friends and get on Skype together, it will make the entire experience so much more fun and will definitely make it a better play through as opposed to playing with randommers or on your own.

Each of the numerous levels in Gauntlet all have a main dungeon design to them, but a lot of the stages are also procedurally generated, allowing for some stages leaving you lost in the deep depths of caves and forcing you to explore around in order to find the exits. Others which are more objective based, whether it be lowering a gate, or finding keys to open a door, will be more or less the same for each play through. Some of the better levels I found are when you have to outrun "Death", you are not able to kill "Death", you just have to run as far away from him as possible before he catches you up. As I said above, there is so much gold to be looted in this game, you can go off the beaten path on the hunt for more of it if you desire, with secret rooms and areas just overflowing with gold all to be found. On top of the gold, there are a few other items you can pick up, Health potions, but these come in the form of dinner on the plate - a nice little feature is that you can actually destroy this meat by hitting it, so that makes the close range combat a little bit more on edge, if you know you are going to need to heal up soon after a fight; it also gives the range characters a need to be a little more precise when it comes to where they aim their attacks. The final item is a potion, this potion is used as a sort of mana crystal for using your special abilities, they can be few and far between so you should try and pick your moments wisely for when you want to use it.

A full run through Gauntlet on medium mode took me just over three hours - even when you finish the whole run, you can still go back and replay previous levels to farm more gold allowing you to purchase more upgrades. I still plan on playing through the game again on hard mode and also playing it with friends. This will easily mean Gauntlet will have a pretty hefty amount of hours/content on offer. I would say you can easily push about twenty hours from it, and that's just with playing with one character! If you want to get fully immersed in this game, you can be at it for weeks and still not experience it all.

Even though the graphics are nothing spectacular, I wasn't able to play Gauntlet on 4k resolutions with max graphics as the frame rate drops down to the region of 30FPS, which for me is unplayable - but I didn't find the graphical differences between 1080 and 4K to be anything massive so I wasn't too bothered about that. Gauntlet can be played with a controller, and to be honest, I think it is designed with a controller in mind, given the amount of abilities and keys you need to be pressing; it makes perfect sense to plug in your controller and sit back to play this game. I also played Gauntlet with the Steam controller, and was able to map all of the buttons perfectly to how I wanted to play.

I am going to strongly recommend Gauntlet, the price tag of £14,99 is reasonable but the amount of content and gameplay quality really out way the price. The game has been known to go as low as £3 on Steam and other sites, so if you see it on sale anywhere, do not hesitate to pick it up. You will get so much game time out of this game and it is something that all RPG fans should be playing.

Tom's Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up. You can also find more reviews over at http://www.completingthebackloggroup.com/

Please also check out Completing the Backlog's Curator page here - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/258970

A well made remake of the 1980s classic arcade game, that is true to it's predecessor. The game looks and feels really good, I really enjoyed the challenges of each level and the chaotic amount of enemies to burn, slash and shoot. I would say the true content of the game is actually the characters, they each offer a unique way of playing, and because they are so different I feel I can replay the game from scratch without feeling like it is a new game.

However, since the game has been out for a year, I am afraid the community has dwindled, making some of the co-operative features only possible by gaming with friends, which can also add a handicap for solo players, but besides that, I recommend the game if you like a good quick action fantasy game, and it is also a good peek into the past of how games were like for the new generation of gamers, but without the dated pixelated graphics :).

If you want to see how the gameplay is like, click on the link below to see my video review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsEExQ4NJSg

Playing this cooperatively with 3 others is great. It keeps the classic Gauntlet formula whilst not trying to overcomplicate things. I can't say I was one of those that had played the original, but playing with those that grew up with it was a good insight.

Personally I don't think it excels in any specific way. Its just a good, solid dungeon crawler. Note that the game takes less then 5 hours to beat, and the game is extremely light on content - even saying that some of the unlocks were really not worth the amount of grinding! Still, Endless and Colosseum modes are nice additions and kept me playing a bit longer.

Grabbed this at a bargain price for £3, and kept me and my friends entertained throughout. A worthy addition to my library.

The game i spent most money on in the arcades as a kid.

This is a faithful reconstruction of that classic from yesteryear.

The developers have recently stopped support and future development however the game is complete and offers plenty of old school treasure hunting fun.

At this stage there are still plenty of players online so you shouldn't be short of someone to trawl the dungeons with.

The graphics and sound are decent and there's plenty of dungeons to explore so pick it up in a steam sale and get dungeoneering :)

6.5/10

Very fun, playing lan with friends makes for a challenging and fun game,