Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Midway
Release Date: December 12, 2005
A
lot of classic game franchises are still struggling with the transition
from 2D to 3D, even with multiple 3D titles under their belts - just
look at Sonic Team's recent struggles with Sonic Heroes and
Shadow the Hedgehog. Gauntlet has been similarly struggling
to find a place in the world of 3D gaming, despite a few successful
arcade games. Seven Sorrows is the latest effort, and in a
lot of ways does the best job to date of bringing the fun of Gauntlet
into the 3D era. Seven Sorrows is a complete, total party game,
lots of fun with three other friends to fill out your party and a bit
lonely when you try to play it solo. The XBox build this review looked
at prominently featured Live support, so fortunately nobody with Live
will have to adventure alone.
The storyline concerns the four
immortal warriors (Barbarian, Valkyrie, Elf, and Wizard) that are the
perennial stars of the Gauntlet games being betrayed by the
Emperor they served, after he came to desire their immortality for himself.
Instead, his evil advisors used the power to become horrible monsters
that tormented the land. The Emperor, consumed with regret, freed the
Immortal Warriors from the magic tree they'd been nailed to, and proceeds
to narrate their adventures as they rove through the world, looking
for Sorrows to kill. As this plot might indicate, the game experience
is mostly about combat, interspersed with some light puzzle-solving.
Most of the time you fight down hordes of enemies that storm out of
monster generators, and sometimes out of thin air, to harass your Immortal.
You can destroy the monster generators to shut them down, and then pick
up any treasure or life-restoring food left lying around.
Now, in old Gauntlet games,
killing monsters consisted of hammering the "kill things"
button and shooting death at your enemies. Seven Sorrows takes
a new and more subtle approach, by installing a combo-oriented attack
system that uses pretty much every button on the controller. You hit
A to use Slash, a wide arc that can hit multiple movies. X triggers
your Hack, an overhead slash that breaks through a blocking enemy's
guard. Y triggers your Launch, a move that throws the enemy into the
air and can be used to initiate air-juggle combos. R lets you interact
with environmental elements, while L lets you block and the left analog
stick lets you dodge quickly away in the indicated direction. B triggers
a magic-enhanced long range attack, and tapping the black button triggers
a giant burst of magic that damages every enemy onscreen, and is the
only move that can possibly damage Death. The right analog stick, of
course, lets you move, and the D-Pad triggers some additional super
moves. The moves triggered with the D-Pad, and the advanced combos you
can do by using certain button presses in sequence, all have to be bought
with the gold you find while exploring levels.
The game is balanced such that you
can't get too many moves too quickly no matter how many people are playing
or what the difficulty level is. So, the farther you go in the game,
the more complex the enemy behaviors get, and the more options you have
in your arsenal for fighting back. At the same time, you're never in
a situation where you can't possibly defend yourself unless you have
a particular advanced move. Each Immortal has a list of moves that is
ultimately unique to that character, but the controls are similar enough
that you can go from one character to another without having to learn
the controls all over again.
The Xbox build we played is of course
nearly complete, and the game looks very good. The camera does a pretty
good job of tracking the party's movements, although you can't actually
move your characters so far apart that they don't all fit onscreen.
This can be frustrating in multiplayer mode when going through, say,
an area that's full of damaging fire-traps, but can also make for some
great party game moments as you curse at other players to back up a
bit so you can get at a chest or generator. The graphics are nicely
detailed, as each Immortal has a wholly unique set of attack animations.
Textures and lighting were believable but not extraordinary, and some
level layouts felt a bit too repetitive.
Enemies are a bit bland, as most
foes only have at most a handful of attack options. We didn't use many
of the combat engine's most advanced moves, since it was often easier
to just counter with a single-button move. Still, the combos were fun
to play around with in later levels, when dozens of monsters can be
moving around onscreen at a time and getting lots of kills quickly becomes
totally necessary for survival. They aren't an option you need so much
as one that's fun to have when you're tired of slashing everything to
death. The game's music is pretty weak, something you'll probably cover
up with a custom play list, but the voice acting and sound effects were
top-notch. It's really fun to hear the narrator grimly intoning "Red
Valkyrie needs food, badly" or "Death has appeared."
Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
is shaping up to an excellent party game. Although it's much too long
to finish in one sitting, it's definitely something you could probably
finish with a group of friends inside of a week if you had plenty of
spare time. The controls put the gameplay emphasis on action in a way
that's satisfying, but they're also simple enough that playing the game
never gets too stressful. Basically, if you want a game where you can
play it with friends and then curse at each other for stealing gold
and kills, Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows is completely for you. It's
goofy fun nicely compressed into DVD disc format.
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