Get Medieval

by Jason D�Aprile
January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST

Gauntlet for the '90s

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If imitation's the grandest form of flattery, Monolith must be suffering from hero worship. Get Medieval, Monolith's second release, is a blatant clone of Atari's classic multiplayer actionfest Gauntlet. For fans of both retro gaming and fantasy action, there's plenty to like here.

Like Gauntlet, GM is a dungeon-crawl shooter where you and up to three others pick from four characters (male and female) and lead them through a monster-infested, treasure-laden evil stronghold. You view the action from overhead, and the game's sharp 16-bit graphics bring the otherwise simplistic game into the '90s. Some nicely evocative lighting and transparency effects enhance the torches and magic, and the variety of monsters (more than 20) throughout the 40 levels is impressive. Admittedly, the nearly endless horde of them seems to use no-brainer AI routines, often ending up looking like a chorus line of freaks when they try to follow you from behind a wall. GM also has a handy random level generator, and Monolith's announced it's releasing a level editor on its Web site.

Impressive sound effects include the deep clanking of metal and wet splats of monsters exploding, and the soundtrack dramatically suits the carnage. But most notable are your characters' humorous one-liners, which give the game a Mystery Science Theater 3000-in-fantasy-drag appeal. It lends a party feel, which matches the cooperative multiplay perfectly. And this really is a multiplayer game: Playing alone tends to get redundant and boring after a while, but the game allows players to mix and match Net and same-machine players to great effect, and Internet play works nicely.

Get Medieval's main strength is its addictively fun cooperative gameplay. This is an homage done right.