4/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of Gauntlet: Slayer Edition.

System: PlayStation 4 Started: December 2015 Ended: January 2016 Flashback Review At the time, PlayStation Network was good for allowing 2 free games per month. Xbox One also offered free games through its Game Pass marketing. Gauntlet 2014 was one of the free games offered in December 2015. I actually downloaded and played it with friends locally. I’ve never played any of the Gauntlet games, but I’ve heard of them. I even saw the arcade cabinet for Gauntlet: Dark Legacy once, and it does look fun to play, and it was regarded as the best Gauntlet game in the series. My overall thoughts for the reboot are that it's pretty fun to play with friends. But not Solo, though. Gauntlet 2014 is a remake of the popular arcade game from the 80s by Atari Games. What is really interesting is that it's a dungeon crawler, and you can choose from 4 classes: Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, and Elf, each with their own attacks and stats. The Slayer Edition added a new class called the Necromancer, which can help summon the army of the dead and spawn a giant hammer. Gauntlet 2014 is not a full Triple-A game but rather an AA-style video game, released digitally for both PC/Steam and home consoles like the PlayStation 4, which I chose to play it on. This remake still captures the Gauntlet experience of having local co-op play. Literally, I got 3 of my friends, and we just played for hours playing through Gauntlet and even repeated missions to try and unlock all special moves and costumes. Every class plays differently. For example, the Elf is essentially a twin-stick shooter, and the Wizard is hard to play, but if you are good with him, you’ll easily earn a lot of gold with him after beating a level. There were moments in the game, particularly on higher difficulties, where we strategize before entering a room. Once locked in, a horde of zombies, mummies, and spiders would appear, and we'd try not to shoot the food for health. This game can lead to conflicts with friends, as you might find yourselves fighting over gold or accidentally shooting the food when a teammate is low on health. Even giving a rating at the end of a level on who is MVP. This game rivals Mario Kart in its potential to strain friendships. Outside of story mode, Gauntlet Slayer Edition offered another mode that we particularly enjoyed, and that is called Endless. This procedurally generated mode was fun to play after we finished with the story mode and wanted something challenging and unexpected. At the time, procedurally generated gameplay was popular in the mid-2010s; even the indie game scene embraced it heavily, with titles like The Binding of Isaac and Rogue Legacy. Gauntlet has only a default class of four, but Slayer Edition has the Necromancer. Compared to Dark Legacy, it has fewer classes, as Dark Legacy has 8 classes plus secrets with better stats. You could say that this remake is a return to the original, as the original game also had 4 characters. A slight problem is that you can’t have duplicate classes in this game, so expect your friends to fight over which class to choose. Compared to other games in the series, like Gauntlet II and Dark Legacy, which allow duplicate classes, the remake does not. This game can be very grindy at times, even after you finish this relatively short game. It is best to play this game on higher difficulty for better rewards, as your gold will be depleted quickly when you buy relics, skills, upgrades, and even costumes for your playable character. And these goods are expensive, while the game offers little gold depending on your performance. Now imagine someone in your friend’s group wants to play the class you’ve invested so much gold in. If you have to pick a class you haven’t focused on, you’ll have to start over by grinding for that character class. To fix that, I would either lower the price of relics and costumes to make them easier to buy, make gold more plentiful to obtain in every level, or award a good amount of gold for every class after beating a level. This game does lack replayability due to the similar level design throughout; it does try to change things up by adding a crypt, a lava temple, and rocky caverns filled with spiders. Everything looks dark and brown compared to Dark Legacy's colorful environments. That is why after finishing this game, nobody really wanted to replay it except for Endless mode. But after finishing the game and have to grind to unlock everything, it really turns the players off in replaying it. It might not be as good as Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, but this Gauntlet remake was fun to play with friends, especially in local co-op. Playing this game solo would drop my rating down to 3 stars, but it's absolutely recommended if you play it with friends. That is why I gave it a four-star rating. If you are looking for a modern co-op dungeon slasher game to play with friends and have already finished more complex games like Baldur’s Gate and Divinity: Original Sin but want something more accessible, Gauntlet Slayer Edition is a great choice. It's a good option if you're looking for something perhaps less mainstream, and being digital-only, it's likely a bargain.