Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5 out of 10

Gauntlet: Slayer Edition is an isometric hack and slash action adventure dungeon crawler game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Gauntlet: Slayer Edition is an enhanced version of a game which was originally released under the title Gauntlet on the Windows platforms. Gauntlet is a legendary videogame series which brought the dungeon crawler genre to light in a way that it had never been experienced before. The series began with a game released to the arcades from Atari all the way back in 1985 before being ported to a variety of platforms including the popular NES version which featured 100 new levels and a quest revolving around the Sacred Orb requiring the collection of a password scattered throughout the dungeons. Gauntlet has since spawned many sequels, home console ports of arcade releases and re-releases on compilations such as Gauntlet II which appeared on the Midway: Arcade Origins compilation in 2012 with Gauntlet games having reached a wide audience over 3 decades on a variety of platforms. Gauntlet: Slayer Edition marks the 30th anniversary of the Gauntlet series, but does it build upon the series to become a better incarnation than what has come before it?

The story revolves around four adventurers who band together to claim the ultimate prize as champions of the Gauntlet which is teased relentlessly by Morak; the only wizard powerful enough to summon the Gauntlet who has promised many before that the depths of the Gauntlet contains an abundance of treasure, although those brave enough to have ventured into the Gauntlet in the past seeking such treasures have never made it out alive.

Campaign mode allows players to experience the story of Gauntlet across 19 normal levels, 9 bonus levels and 3 enemy boss levels totalling to 31 levels, while endless mode is a new mode which tasks players to survive for as long as possible through an endless maze of procedurally generated floors containing many enemies and traps, alongside the online only coliseum which provides fresh daily challenges with a different combination of dungeon and spawn type.

Masteries are effectively in-game challenges which task the player to perform a certain action a particular number of times in order to be rewarded with artwork on the Masteries menu with Masteries spread across the warrior, valkyrie, wizard, elf and necromancer character classes, while every character class contains 6 categories comprising of a total of over 150 Masteries at different levels such as bronze, silver and gold which require a higher number of successful completion to achieve a silver or gold Mastery. The Masteries include the warrior’s furious charge for tackling 500 monsters using rush; the valkyrie’s eye for an eye for blocking 100 projectiles with shield block; the wizard’s stormcaller for killing 1,000 monsters with lightning spells; the elf’s precision strike for killing 500 monsters with magic arrow or sniper shot and the necromancer’s soul reaper for summoning 200 undead minions, while there are lots of Masteries which have a similar premise for each character with a different figure attached for each, although there are a fair amount of unique Masteries for each character to appropriately balance the approach of the entire feature.

There are some important gameplay elements such as eating food to replenish a character’s health and increase the chances of survival, while gold can be collected in order to have enough currency to purchase new equipment; potions can be collected to utilise the potion ability which explodes when destroyed causing damage to nearby enemies; collecting keys to open doors in order to access new areas; and explosives which explodes after a small delay when damaged and can be positioned strategically to kill enemies or even destroy cracked walls in order to access new areas.

The character design is excellent as there are four playable characters with each having their own unique character class including warrior, valkyrie, wizard and elf. The warrior wields an axe and prefers to be in the midst of the battle as he is a strong fighter with brutal melee attacks, while the valkyrie utilises a sword, spear and shield to her advantage; the wizard possesses arcane magic as he combines elements to cast a range of spells; and the elf carries a bow and arrows to fight and take out priority targets from a distance.

The shop is effectively an equipment loadout selection prior to entering a level with each character class possessing their own unique weapon abilities, talisman potion abilities and relic abilities as well as appearance customisation for every character including head, body and capes. Anything can be purchased from the shop with in-game currency which is earned from collecting treasure during levels, although items gradually increase in their pricing with such equipment including the warrior’s Turbo-Slam weapon ability costing 41,000 which inflicts a hammerblow sending shockwaves outwards; More of Thor potion ability costing 100,000 which allows the warrior to grow larger, increase damage and become invulnerable to enemy attacks; and the Boots of Ranadam relic ability costing 8,500 to increase the speed of movement and attacks. The wizard is a prime example of how diverse the equipment loadout is for each of the character classes with a void school weapon ability costing 30,000 to provide dark torrent, vacuum and invincibility spells; Barrier potion ability costing 85,000 to conjure a magical shield which blocks out enemies; and the Tempest Locket relic ability costing 9,000 which summons a whirlwhind knocking surrounding monsters to the ground.

The enemy design is incredibly varied which actually elevates the game to another level of quality with sorcerers creating entire hordes of enemies, smaller mummies moving faster, larger mummies moving slower, demons, skeletons, ghostly spirits, spiders, three enemy bosses, Death which appears in specific levels to hunt down the adventurers to kill them with a single touch and much more besides.

The environment design consists of procedurally generated floors within dungeons which have received improvements since the initial release to make for more diverse environments. The environments do include some puzzles along the way which consist of exploring to find keys to unlock a door or barrier, assembling stones in order to create a passage to a higher platform or gathering stones to position in a specific area to gain access to the following area.

The performance during remote play is excellent as the graphics, audio and general performance are all on par with the quality of the PS4 version, while being able to participate in two player local multiplayer or four player online multiplayer without any reduction in performance during remote play is a real highlight. The controls have been appropriately optimised as the core controls remain the same, but that is not all as performing a blocking manoeuvre has moved from R2 to R and any attacks mapped to L2 moving to L, although that has meant that using relics has been reconfigured from R1 to the right of the rear touch pad and using potion abilities is the left of the rear touch pad rather than L1 which is the only criticism as it would have been better if they would have been mapped to the bottom left and right of the touch screen, although it is still a very functional and comfortable control scheme.

There is downloadable content available for Gauntlet: Slayer Edition in the form of a fifth playable character and character class called Lilith the Necromancer who has the capabilities to harness dark magic and call upon her knowledge of the Book of the Dead in which Lilith can summon a pack of undead skeletons to momentarily rise up from the ground and protect her from incoming enemies which certainly provides a change in strategy and approach to the game via the addition of Lilith the Necromancer’s character class for just £3.99*.

The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller, although the control scheme changes depending upon which character has been chosen, but generally consists of pressing square, triangle or O to perform a variety of attacks; and pressing R2 to perform a block manoeuvre as a warrior or valkyrie, while a wizard has the same core controls, but is based around conjuring elements with multiple button combinations to conjure and perform a spell; an elf has unique attacks which are mapped differently such as pressing R2 to perform a sniper shot; pressing L2 to perform a magic bomb or magic shot ability; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to fire quick shots; and pressing O to perform a tumbling dodge-move to evade attacks; alongside the necromancer who possesses a variety of attacks by pressing square, triangle or O and changing the direction of the right analogue stick to ghostwalk, while all five playable characters can use a potion ability and a relic by pressing L1 or R1 respectively; pressing X to use or interact with an object; pressing left, right, up or down on the d-pad to emote or taunt; pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. There is no touch pad implementation which could have provided touch and swiping gesture alternatives to attacks, while the light bar permanently remains a corresponding colour to a character including red for the warrior character class, blue for valkyrie, yellow for wizard, green for elf and purple for necromancer, alongside the DualShock 4 controller which vibrates when an enemy has landed an attack which has dealt damage to the character or when they have died.

Graphically, it is as good as can be anticipated from a Gauntlet game with great playable and enemy character animations which are complimented by destructible objects such as vases, barrels and crates as well as excellent lighting and shadows such as the change in lighting and shadows when lit wooden torches have been destroyed.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, quick join, local game, online leaderboards, masteries, how to play, options and gameplay menus which can be occasionally spoilt by descriptive text being presented in a font which is significantly too small with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad. The background of the main menu consists of a mountain as a skull with menacing red eyes takes centre stage as lightning strikes from stormy skies strike upon the title logo which is positioned directly above the skull.

All of the voice-over artists provide a unique personality to each character which excels the audio with Kola Krauze voicing Morak having previously performed motion capture roles as Preston in Battlefield: Bad Company and Groeder in Bionic Commando; Tim Earl as Merlin the Wizard; Indy Neidell voicing Questor the Elf; Evamarie Oria as Thyra the Valkyrie and Monte Reid voicing Thor the Warrior. The sound effects include a range of attacks from the chosen character, enemies rising up from the ground, enemies attacking the chosen character, walking, running, jumping, collecting treasure, destroying crates and other objects, spike traps and atmospheric whispers from within areas of the Gauntlet, alongside classical, adventurous and atmospheric music. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation which is surprising as it could have produced any of the voice-overs, sound effects or music.

The trophy list includes 39 trophies with 19 bronze, 17 silver, 2 gold and 1 platinum trophy. The easiest trophies include the As Luck Would Have It bronze trophy for destroying 800 props, the Dying for a Living bronze trophy for dying 100 times with a single hero and the Eye for an Eye bronze trophy for blocking 100 projectiles with Valkyrie’s shield. There are some harder trophies such as the We Need to go Deeper gold trophy for surviving from floor 1 through 50 in endless mode, while the majority of the trophies are not hard but do require a serious investment in time due to a large number of trophies which require 8,000, 12,000 or as high as even 15,000 enemies of a specific type to be killed in a particular way by a certain character class. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 80 to 100 hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are three difficulty levels including easy, normal and hard which is one less in comparison to the original release with the easiest difficulty having been removed and what was previously the hard difficulty becoming the normal difficulty with the new hard difficulty being a step up in difficulty over the original release. The major differences being the reward of more gold coupled with the added challenge of stronger and more monsters when playing on the hard difficulty in comparison to the normal or easy difficulty levels resulting in a risk and reward factor of a higher probability that players will not last as long, although more gold is available for those who are brave enough to attempt the hardest difficulty.

Local and online multiplayer is supported for between two to four players in which players can be as co-operative as possible to share in their combined victory or embrace the competitive element by stabbing their team-mates in the back to collect as much of the treasure for themselves as possible, while food can be destroyed to prevent team-mates from increasing their health, therefore sabotaging the chances of their survival. The story campaign, endless and coliseum modes are fully supported by local and online multiplayer with such abilities as starting a game by yourself which is open to the public to join or set to private with the option of inviting friends into the game, while a further alternative is quick join which will place a player into a game as quickly as an online game can be found.

The online leaderboards are focused on worldwide rankings and friends rankings for the endless mode with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank, name (PSN ID), floor and the amount of gold accumulated with the positioning of each player based upon the floor they successfully reached, although it would have been even better to have co-operative leaderboards for two, three and four players in endless mode as well as single player and co-operative leaderboards for the story campaign with such details as the amount of gold collect and the amount of enemies defeated.

The replayability stems from a variety of areas including campaign, endless and colosseum modes, four widely varying character classes, upgradeable equipment loadouts, local and online co-operative multiplayer with competitive elements, competitive online leaderboards and three difficulty levels which will collectively have players coming back for more for an extensive period of time.

Overall, Gauntlet: Slayer Edition has received a variety of improvements and re-balancing tweaks during the transition between the Windows and PS4 release which really shows in how polished the experience is. If you are a fan of Gauntlet or couch co-op and the dungeon crawling genre in general, then Gauntlet: Slayer Edition is an absolute must purchase especially for the amount of content for a budget price of just £15.99*.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Gauntlet: Slayer Edition
• Developer: Arrowhead Studios
• Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: No
• Cross-Play: No
• Players: 1-4 (Local and Online Co-Operative Multiplayer)/Online Leaderboards
• Hard Drive Space Required: 1.82GB (Version 1.02)
• *Correct at time of publication