Get Medieval is a sequel to Gauntlet, sporting
enhanced graphics and levels. For those of you who never
played Gauntlet, the premise of the game is essentially kill,
kill, kill, in a fantasy setting. The player walks around either a
specifically designed dungeon (for the quest mode) or a
randomly generated one, killing monsters and collecting loot
and power-ups. The character is controlled from an overhead
view by either a keyboard, joystick or game-pad, all with
extremely simple to use controls. While Get Medieval is
simple, it's also fast, furious, easy to learn and control and just
plain fun.
The player can choose between four different
characters: an archer, a barbarian, a sword wielding woman
and a sorceress. Each has their own specific type of attack and
their own strengths and weaknesses in the areas of foot speed,
weapon speed and weapon strength. Each character can
attack either from a distance or close up, with certain
characters having a better close up and others having a better
distance attack. There are also visual and vocal differences
between the characters, which, while not changing the way
they play, adds an element of personality to the game. Each
character is splendidly rendered and looks extremely different
from all the others: the barbarian is a big hulking man while
the sorceress is a smooth walking cloaked woman. The vocal
differences are superb, but I'll get into that in the audio section.
The variation between the characters allows for much more
replay and is one of the strongest points of the game.
The graphics of Get Medieval are excellent for a 2D
game. I found them to be very colourful and diverse: you can
always tell what something is just by the way it looks. Each
monster is rendered just as well as the characters, and the boss
monster renderings are just excellent. Top down views usually
look ugly, but Get Medieval breaks this barrier with its very
acceptable graphics, which, while not the best there are, are
excellent and very suitable for a game of this type.
The audio was a mixture of amazing and mediocre.
The amazing part was the voices of the characters, which I
found to be hilarious. Each character has a very distinct voice
and sayings which are activated by different situations. For
example when the barbarian has been walking around a lot
without encountering monsters he says "All this walking is
giving me good pumping of the legs" in a very
Schwartzeneger-like voice. Another saying I found to be
hilarious when I first heard it was "I am bigger and stronger
than the rest of the girlie men." which is said by the barbarian
in the character selection screen. The mediocre sound is in the
form of the sound effects which serve there purpose but are
nothing special.
Get Medieval can be both very fun and very
repetitive. Fortunately it is more usually fun than boring. There
are several modes one can choose from when playing the
game: the quest mode, the random dungeon mode and the
custom dungeon mode. The quest mode has specifically
designed levels which are much more interesting to play than
the random dungeons because you have a sense of purpose.
However, the random dungeons are also fun if you just feel like
killing some monsters, even though there is no real purpose
behind it all. Custom dungeons, I believe, allow you to get new
dungeons from the Internet or design your own and play them
(although I didn't see an editor anywhere). This allows for
some excellent dungeon designs, but I doubt a lot of people
will be playing this game, so don't expect much in this field.
While the game consists of killing monsters and finding secret
levers and keys you can also power-up your weapons and
armor, which are quite cool when at the highest level. The
puzzle aspect is well implemented and I never found myself
wandering around with nothing to do. Overall this game is
great fun, but nothing I'd want to spend four hours at a time
playing.
Multiplay is only cooperative, which makes sense to
me (you have to play the game to really understand). However,
the cooperative play is very well done and makes the game
even more fun. You can play either on the same computer or
over a LAN and both methods run smoothly. This isn't the
greatest multiplayer game ever, but it is smooth and pretty fun
in its own respect.
Get Medieval will be staying on my hard drive as a
game to play when I only have 30 or so minutes to do so and I
think that's really what the developers were aiming at. This is
the best game of its type that I have played and a welcome
addition to my gaming directory in the usual summer drought.
Gauntlet is back! Well sort of. This isn't made by the original
authors of Gauntlet but the design is the same. You fight
monsters from the top view with your choice of Barbarian, Elf,
Avenger or Sorcerer classes. There are armor and weapon
upgrades and the usual bevy of gold, treasure, etc.
The game looks pretty good considering the current level of
graphics. There is no 3D hardware support however, so the
more advanced graphics like smoke, and alpha-blending are
not present. However, an earlier game called Mageslayer, did
have 3D support and colored lighting and the whole schlameel
and it still sucked, so graphics aren't everything. The game
runs extremely smooth for me so a P2 is in no way required. I
would have liked to see more variety in the spells since there
is just one spell you can cast which fires a blue ring outward
that kills all monsters. Choices of spells or at least a different
spell for each class would have been cool. Also I would have
liked to see new graphics for your melee weapon as you
upgrade it, such as a light trail on your arrows or some sparkly
effect, the better your weapon gets. Armor also looks the same
although you are constantly upgrading that too. Perhaps a skin
change as you get better armor so your character looks more
powerful. Decent graphics overall but the little touches are
missing.
"All this running is getting me pumped up". The speech is
hilarious if you choose the Barbarian class. His voice is done in
an Arnold Schwarzeneggar style and he says lots of funny stuff.
The other classes say funny lines as well but they don't
emulate a voice we're familiar with so they don't have as much
impact. Sound effects serve the game well otherwise but
nothing really out of the ordinary. Music is slashed out.
The game is fun. It's not a title with any real longevity but for a
week or so it will serve its purpose. The difficulty is about right
with choices of easy, medium and hard and there are level
bosses every 6 stages or so. Multiplayer is possible on one
machine as long as you have enough keyboards/gamepads to
go around for the max of 4 players possible. You can play via
modem, TCP and LAN but I found even a 2 player game with
my 56k modem and a friends cable connection, to be a bit
lagged. There are quests and random dungeons so there
should be no lack of levels to play. I found keyboard to be very
frustrating to use a gamepad, if you don't have a gamepad, for
god's sake go buy one. It's a good game overall but it lacks the
character of Gauntlet.
Good stuff:
runs fast on normal pentiums
decent graphics
mindless fun
Bad stuff:
lacks that gauntlet "character"
laggy Internet play for modems
graphics could be way better
there should be midi tracks for music
By: 