G-pinions

As you have (hopefully) already read on this site, Nick and I played through the entirety of the new Gauntlet title yesterday. It lasted less than 3.5 hours and produced not one memorable moment. Afterwards, we both agreed that Gamespot's score of 5.2 (one of the lowest scores you'll see a publication hand out to a major developer like Midway) was far too generous. There is literally not one good thing in Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. There are certain things it does adequately, such as control I guess, but nothing solid enough that I would be able to truthfully say "well, at least this is good." I love Hack and Slash titles; Nick and I sunk about 80 hours into the two Norrath games and had a blast with Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks until it crashed an hour after the last save point. But Gauntlet is just a horrible attempt at a shallow genre.

Oh, by the way, thanks Midway for sending Nick and I a review copy.

Anyway, I clicked on the IGN review that Nick linked to last night, anxious to find some good-natured ribbing, and was shocked to see they had given it a 7.0. A 7 out of 10, not out of 100. I was so surprised, I interrupted my quest for grammatical perfection in Instant Messenger by screaming to Nick, in all caps "SEVEN POINT OH!?" I couldn't believe it. Granted, their score system is so skewed that 7.0 merely means the title is decent, but Gauntlet is most certainly not even worthy of that kind of praise. Maybe if it was a $20 budget title I could excuse its brevity and simplicity, but at a full $50, I simply cannot let this stand.

First of all, I am aware that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I don't like using numbers to quantify how good a game is, but I respect that major publications have to fuel angry message board feuds. But video game journalists have a responsibility to their readers. Yes, how much fun a title is should weigh into your overall take on the game, but it is possible to objectively look at a game and say if it is truly good or not. Psi Ops, for instance, is one of my favorite games this generation, but it isn't particularly good. It's short, the last quarter of the game is quite lame, it has a horrible story, bad AI, linear level design... it has a lot of problems. But I had fun with it. So, whenever I write about it, I make sure people know this is not a good title, but it can be fun if you can ignore all its faults. Of course, Psi Ops also had an awesome and completely new system of controlling people and objects with your mind. I'm sure if it was just another generic title, like Gauntlet is to hack and slash, I wouldn't have liked it nearly as much. However, even if IGN did like G:SS, they could have listed Gauntlet's faults and said "But I still had a blast." That would be fine. But, as quotes from their review will show, they didn't do that.


Ug - Lee

Here we go!

"Thanks to the wonders of Xbox Live Arcade, we've been able to go back in time and play the original Gauntlet on the 360."

Nick didn't mention you could go back in time with the new Xbox. Tell me, can you go back to the future as well? What are you, chicken?

IGN's take on the story:

"If you haven't already guessed, the advisors turn on the emperor, steal his power, enslave the world and transform themselves into evil forms like the Scarecrow and the Twisted Man. The Emperor, having seen the error of his ways, frees the four heroes and sends them after the six evil advisors to mend the sorrows he has wrought."

See, this is where most people would have taken the time to rip the ridiculously uninspired nature of this game. The first boss you fight has the body of a scarecrow with a pumpkin head. Nick immediately said, as the introduction cut scene was still rolling, something like "What is his name? Barn Pump Crow Man?" See, that's funny? We were both pretty disappointed when we found out his name was "Scarecrow." How lame is that? And since when do scarecrows have pumpkin heads? Wouldn't that actually attract crows? Not to mention the reek. Oh the smell! It would have at least been ironically funny if he commanded crows, sending murder after murder at you. But, alas, he just walked around while we hit him with our weapons of might. Ho hum.

Oh, and this is also the first passage in the IGN review that reads like a press release. "Mend the sorrows he has wrought," eh? Do people actually write like that?


Ah! Death! Quick, hit the Black button!"

Back to IGN's review:

"Try as they might, though, it's almost as if the people at Midway just haphazardly threw some story together just to have a story. The four heroes don't talk or have any personality, so there is no way to relate to the characters and no reason to care about what happens."

I guess this is the part where the IGN editor was like "Be more objective. Insult the story, damnit!" Of course, this comes after the reviewer already said that "Seven Sorrows is just good old-fashioned, three-dimensional Gauntlet" and had already determined that the original Gauntlet was "one of the all-time great quarter-suckers. There was no story. You would just grab a friend and mash."

So they said that the original Gauntlet is great, even though it doesn't have a story, and the new game is just a 3D interpretation of this "classic" title, yet they rip the story? Huh? They clearly are content with no story at all. Why not just pat Midway on the back for including a story for those who want it, and make a note that you can easily skip the narrative if you just want mindless hack and slash action?

I'm so disgusted I'm going to quote IGN some more:

"The heart of Seven Sorrows, like its predecessor, is the on-screen, hack and slash action, which can be a lot of fun."

This is perfectly acceptable. Gauntlet: SS can be fun. Heck, every co-op game is fun. The reviewer certainly had fun. Furthermore, this game will definitely appeal to some people. If more than 100 people actually beat Clocktower 3, it's not too surprising that a few will like this as well. This review would have been fine if the reviewer accurately described the experience. Unfortunately, this is not what actually happened.


Yawn... block pushing puzzle

"The four characters each have very different fighting styles, each equally enjoyable in their own way."

Complete lie. "Very different fighting style" is not a subjective opinion like "fun." It is an objective, definitive fact. The fighting styles in this game do not vary at all. I was the Valkyrie and Nick was the Warrior, we had an identical fighting style. Nick was also the Elf for a brief period, and he just ran around swinging a sword like the other two characters. How, exactly, are these characters different? Let's ask IGN!

"The Warrior is a hulking brute with powerful combos and close attacks, with limited magic and projectile attacks. He wields a giant axe that has good range and looks pretty dang cool. The Valkyrie is a slippery little swashbuckler with a short sword and a strong projectile attack. The Elf is a swordfighter and uses a fencing style to stave off enemies."

Um... yes. To quote Brendan "This one picks the enemies off from a distance, while that one prefers to use projectile attacks." The Valkyrie and Warrior both have semi-homing projectile attacks. If they did a different amount of damage, I sure couldn't tell. And the length of their weapons seemed the same as well. What made these characters different? They even moved at the same speed! Also, I played enough Soul Calibur 2 to recognize a fencing style. The Elf did not utilize this art; instead he practiced running in blindly, swinging his sword wildly like every other character.


Note: Soul Calibur 2 has nothing to do with Gauntlet

In IGN's defense, we didn't use the Wizard. But even if he is drastically different (which I doubt) that would mean 3 characters were the same and one was different.

"Midway also implemented an upgradeable combo system with which you can purchase increasingly devastating attacks which look awesome."

The upgrade system, as they call it, was as simple as you can imagine. You acquire gold throughout levels, and afterwards you can spend gold on new attacks. The combos are something like "Hit XXX to do a sweeping move that hits backwards as well" or "XY hits multiple enemies into the air." They had hardly any affect on the game at all. You can just hit buttons randomly, without these combos, and have very similar results. The fact that IGN thinks they "look awesome" is quite subjective, so I'll let that go, but making it seem like the combos you purchase have an actual affect on the gameplay seems slightly misleading.

"The large number of combos coupled with the variety of the attack styles of the four warriors make for a deep hack and slash experience, if there is such a thing."

The combos are worthless and the warriors all fight the same. Deep hack and slash experience, eh?

"Possibly in homage to old-school Gauntlet, health in Seven Sorrows is replenished by eating turkeys, ham and giant wedges of cheese."

Not to mention a piece of meat which looks like a horse's head... Remember playing Bubble Bobble and questioning what kinds of food you were eating? That was funny. Not being able to figure it out in a current game just shows laziness on the part of the developer.

"In multiplayer, conversation can get pretty hilarious as you scream out to your teammate, 'Save me that cheese!'"

Wow... pretty hilarious. I thought it was funnier when I would see my low health and say "I don't care if I die." Because dying doesn't actually hurt you in this game. There are respawn points everywhere, and if you lose all five of your lives (which only happened once when Nick was distracted by paint drying) you can just remove your character and then reload them again. In fact, Nick and I were able to cheese our way through boss fights by standing on respawn points while we fought. I'm fairly certain the developers never even heard of the phrase "game design."


This is more than 2,000 words long. Have another picture

"While the single-player mode can be repetitive, multiplayer let's you team together with friends to take out enemies in different ways."

Oh, what kind of different ways are there IGN?

"We enjoyed launching enemies into the air with the Warrior then shooting a barrage of arrows with the Elf at the enemies' flying bodies."

Ok. Anything else?

"..."

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"..."

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Moving on

"The bosses, which can be frustratingly difficult if you fight solo, are a breeze in multiplayer -- almost too easy, in fact. All hell breaks loose when you have all four heroes going at once."

Is it just me, or do they make "almost too easy" boss fights seem like a good thing?

Ok, that's enough. I'm sure some of you are wondering why I wasted my time writing this post that tries to take down Gauntlet and IGN in one shot. First of all, you should know the average rating of G:SS is actually higher than the 7.0 IGN gave it. Clearly, a lot of journalists are out and out lying to people. However, IGN's review was the first I read and they had a lot of misleading info in it. Also, I actually like IGN for the most part, so this is not just trying to make them look bad. Their review of Gauntlet is inexcusable.

So what were my reasons for writing this? For one, I want people to know that G:SS is a legitimately bad title. This is the second worst game I've played all year, behind only Snood 2. Second, there is a reason that people bash video game journalists. Either Jonathan Miller of IGN didn't play the game or just has such bad taste in games he can't even recognize a poor title. I don't even want to think of other possibilities because we could be charged with libel.

A few more notes from the experience Nick and I had while playing through this game. First, we were so bored by the end that we just ran through the last two levels, only fighting when it was completely necessary (i.e., not too often). Nick said it best "These enemies are more like environmental hazards than actual enemies - you just have to pick the right angle and you can run right by them." Keep in mind, we were able to run by twenty or more at a time just by hugging the wall.

Also, the graphics are so bad, Nick and I actually stopped running through levels from time to time so we could make fun of them. The grass looks like paper and moves in one massive clump. The textures are blurry, eerily reminiscent of the N64. Finding your path through the level is difficult because what Midway lets you walk over and what is impossible to pass is completely random. Everything looks the same so it's quite hard to know where you can actually walk. Also, this game only lasts three hours because they threw in some lame backtracking towards the end.

This title is a complete disaster and should be avoided at all costs.