That’s right, I’m doing reviews now. Why? Because I have nothing better to do with my time than to complain about things I don’t like or to try to sell you on things that I think are cool, that’s why. I’ll be reviewing all manner of things in the future, but today’s victim is the Gamecube game “Gauntlet: Dark Legacy”. It’s actually a cross platform title and not a Gamecube exclusive, but I don’t have a PS2 or an Xbox, so it doesn’t really matter to me. Anyways, I have the hookup for free game rentals, so I’ll just grab whatever every now and then and play it, since hey, it’s not like I’m spending any hard earned money here. Last night I ended up walking out with Gauntlet. I walked it back this morning. My synopsis of the game in one sentence would have to be this:
“Same old Gauntlet, but with new and improved homosexuality!” You have your same old character classes with the addition of a few new cheesy ones like the Jester, Knight, or Dwarf, a couple of combo moves to keep you entertained for maybe five minutes, but other than that, it’s the same old Gauntlet all over again. I’d say even if you loved the old Gauntlet, you’d tire of this game in under three levels. The graphics are nothing to get excited about either. It’s the same old thing, slightly better rendered. Most of the sound effects are even identical to the N64 Gauntlet. The storyline is identical as well, but that’s typically the last thing anyone who plays a hack and slash game like this thinks of anyway. It almost seems to me like they just polished up their old game to give it another go, with no further effort than that. The monotony alone of this nearly identical sequel would be enough to make you return it in under half an hour, but that wasn’t enough for the folks at Midway. They don’t want you to throw their game out for mere boredom, no, you must also feel some sense of outrage or disgust to accompany it. This is where the single most noticeable change they made to the game to set it apart from previous Gauntlets comes into play. It would appear that the only thing they made a major effort to change was the character movement. You no longer have just some plodding brutish warrior wildly swinging an axe around the battlefield. No, now your character has the addition of a flamboyant skip, or has a dumb wussy looking special attack, or cries like a girl in the heat of battle. The manliness that was the only thing that kept a guy playing this game in the first place is now gone. Big masculine brutes used to sit in front of the TV, clumsily holding controllers in their meaty fists for hours, playing Gauntlet with such phrases of joy and excitement as “Me beat monsters with axe!”, “Food is good!”, or “THUNDER HAMMER go BOOM!” This solitary motivation to play the game so you can beat the hell out of things like a man has been replaced with a bunch of pansies skipping around the acid fields like they’re going to a picnic. What the hell were they thinking? Obviously the folks at Midway have been watching way too much Nickelodeon to have that level of homosexuality permeate that vacuous emptiness between their ears where their brains should be. Not to mention, who plays hack and slash games anymore anyways? It was a dying breed on the last generation of consoles. Get with it and make a first person shooter Gauntlet already. And
PLEASE, no Spongebob Warriorpants this time.
Now for the ratings. I have created a set of standards by which to measure games on a 1-10 scale, and I will additionally throw in a variable attribute distinctive to something the particular game does outstandingly well or poorly in that doesn’t quite fit in one of the standard categories. I will then graphically display the scores using Klingon military rank symbols, just because I can. So without further ado:
| Graphics: 3/10 |  | Overall Score |
| Sound: 3/10 | |  |
| Gameplay: 2/10 |  |
| Ingenuity: 1/10 |  |
| Replay Value: 1/10 | |
| Flaming Homosexuality: 10/10 |  | 2/10 |
This game barely beats out any game with a pop singer or “Mary Kate and Ashley” in the title, and only because it has a history of masculinity, even though it was sorely destroyed with this title. Do not under any circumstances rent this game unless you have serious masochistic issues.