At first glance this game looks like quite an improvement on Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. Alas, it really is not in the grand scheme of things. I picked this up because of the cooperative multiplayer and the fact that it seemed to be a pretty interesting role playing game. In order to properly review this game I first had to go back and play "Dark Legacy" to see what the difference was. Boy, are there some huge ones. Some go in the right direction, but some are just horrible.

One benefit I will point out is that the graphics were improved upon immensely. They're heavily detailed and actually use the Xbox graphic abilities the way it's supposed to be used. You don't have that major overhead view anymore and it's more like playing a Tomb Raider third person view. However, despite all this grand improvement, the camera is still fixed! Why they improved the graphics on a grand scale and didn't make a rotating camera is anyone's guess. "Here's this grand lush world to look at... but you can only see it from one camera view, sorry." Great, thanks. Overall it was one of the dumbest things they could have done. They also dropped the whole "everyone has long ranged attack" type of combat and actually had their melee characters fight like regular melee characters. Sure they can get special abilities/magic to give them a more long distance attack, but they're not on the same level as the sorcerer. Along with this added melee attack feature you can do some pretty awesome combo's and basically every character has this option, though naturally the sorcerer's melee attacks won't be of the same strength as the Valkyrie. I thought these were some pretty cool additions to the game. Oh and they also fixed that pesky walking problem like I mentioned in my "Dark Legacy" review, your characters no longer trip over each other when they walk next to each other.

Some of the things they kept the same were the way the enemies spawn. They come from those strange spawning gates and constantly keep being created until you destroy their spawn point. This is pretty awesome if you want to sit down and just kill a bunch of stuff to try and level up your characters faster. The cast of characters is mostly the same, but they really did cut a lot out of this game. Leveling up is loosely the same, only I think it's based on kills now, not hits and you can't buy any nifty items from a "store". There are no unlockable characters like we had in the previous game, and that's one of the things that made that game kind of fun. I guess this leads me into the negatives.

The absolute worst part about this game is that it took my friends and I only four hours to beat this thing. Frankly, this just isn't worth the money! FOUR hours. Seriously, "Dark Legacy" took a long time to beat and the follow-up takes only four? Despite the faults of "Dark Legacy" it's a heck of a lot better than this given the four hour playtime. It's like they spent all their time making graphical improvements and then spent twenty minutes throwing together some lame story line. Yes, the story line for this one is even lamer than "Dark Legacy". At least "Dark Legacy" was overly cliché, but this is about some emperor who took over the land and committed great evil. Now he feels remorseful and the seven creatures he put in charge of the land need to be destroyed. That would kind of be cool, but they do look kind of lame and non-threatening. I don't know, the real problem is this game starts out and you think it's kind of fun regardless of the silly story. Then you get to the end in such a short time, with no major revelation, that you just feel you wasted your time. I would've rather they designed the standard overhead modeling for the graphics and just wrote a game with a length that didn't make me feel ripped off.

Combined with the non-rotating camera and the ridiculously short length of the game, I just can't give this my hearty endorsement. There are far superior games out there and this definitely doesn't live up to the spirit of Gauntlet, from what I can tell. Even the maps are more confusing this time around. There's no crystals you need to find to unlock areas, there are no secret areas to get into. There are just the seven sorrows and then you're done. It's practically less than a single area from "Dark Legacy", what a wasted follow-up. The game is fun in it's own right, but there just should've been more.

Gauntlet took the traditional dungeon crawl style made popular by the pen-and-paper role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, and amped it up to an insane degree by tossing billions of monsters at four heroes from a top-down perspective. Your heroes, in turn, were armed with medieval weaponry that they hurled at ridiculous speeds, machinegun-style.

I've been a fan of Gauntlet since the game was in the video arcades. Ah, the good old days of the Barbarian, Valkyrie, Elf, and Wizard. Of course, no self-respecting guy wanted to be the Valkyrie, because...well because she was a girl. The Elf was nearly just as bad, especially when he shrieked in his prissy elf voice, "Oh no!" as he neared death.

Gauntlet introduced a lot of fantasy troupes that are routinely mocked today. It rationalized that when you eat food, you heal. Given that I'd prefer just sucking down a shake once a day to actually having to eat, I have difficulty imagining that food actually gives you that kind of recuperative abilities. Sometimes food was just sitting in some chest, waiting to be discovered. Other times monsters dropped it. It always looked delicious; a whole chicken on a plate with potatoes, a leg of pork, or some smelly cheese. It never made any sense and didn't have to.

Gauntlet was also known for the Dungeon Master (again, swiped from D&D) providing some obvious and not so-obvious commentary. My all time favorite is when the other characters accidentally destroyed food. "ELF SHOT THE FOOD!" booms the DM, encouraging every other player to smack them upside the head. About to die? The DM had some advice there too. "WIZARD NEEDS FOOD. BADLY!" When I get really hungry before lunch, sometimes I hear that voice too.

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, attempts to update the hack-and-slash style of the original Gauntlet while at the same time providing the rationale for the characters' ridiculous "kill `em all, let the DM sort `em out" style of mass murder.

Our heroes are immortals, crucified (!) by some kind of Aztec-looking sun emperor. His seven advisors all turned out to be wretchedly evil. Since the heroes are immortal, they didn't die (and now we know why they keep coming back to life each game...it all makes sense now!). Filled with regret, the emperor (taking the role of the booming DM voice guy) guides our heroes along the path to redemption by encouraging them to kicking the living snot out of his former employees.

A lot of thought went into Seven Sorrows. The generators that spawn dozens of monsters are still there, but they create enemies with a magical flourish. The environment is beautifully rendered in three dimensions, allowing enemies to be knocked right off precipices (my favorite tactic). In addition to all the running and the killing, there are occasional quests where our heroes go and kill more monsters, find a key, then run back to the door and open it. Gauntlet was never a deep game.
Each hero has been updated with a wide variety of moves, including magical powers that replace the potion-bombs from the original Gauntlet. The Elf can stun enemies, the Valkyrie shrieks and tosses bad guys into the air, etc. Each hero has a logical ranged weapon too; the Valkyrie shoots energy lances from her blade, the Elf pulls out his bow and fires, the Barbarian hurls hand axes and the Wizard shoots bolts of energy. All four heroes are highly individualized; the Valkyrie's "jump back" maneuver is actually a series of backflips while the Wizard teleports all over. Overall, the graphics are impressive.

Unfortunately, Seven Sorrows is far, far too short. My wife and I have come to the conclusion that we are now advanced players, so starting a game on normal difficulty no longer suffices. We should have set it on hard but didn't; in retrospect, I'm not sure if that would have helped. We ended up beating the game in the span of just a few hours.

It's ironic that Seven Sorrows is probably most like the original Gauntlet game. That's not a compliment though; in a crowded market of Gauntlet-clones, Seven Sorrows doesn't sufficiently distinguish itself from all the other sword-swinging, axe-hurling, bow-shooting, magic-blasting games out there.

If you compare the cost of buying this movie from a Used reseller vs the cost of a bad summer action flick then this game is a bargain. I actually enjoyed this game. Nothing deep to figure out, just pick up the controller and mash buttons with a friend.

Pros:
- Simpler game interface and customizations than previous generation of Gauntlet. I actually prefer this simplification. I found Gauntlet Dark Legacy a bit excessive in the customization department and found myself ignoring most of it.
- Returns Gauntlet to its simpler origins.
- Graphics are quite good, there are some landscape scenes that are really quite well done.
- Musical score is decent, and sets the mood appropriately.
- Shorter game. I think this is a Pro rather than a Con - I found the previous generation a bit too long for my taste, and frankly got tired of it so never finished it.

Cons:
- Game is repetitive- but frankly Gauntlet has always been repetitive.

"Gauntlet" is `born anew' in Midway's latest update of its legendary franchise, which tries in vain to add grit and a storyline to attract new players. While the story is mildly interesting, it's still quite simple - an emperor betrays his four immortal heroes (warrior, valkyrie, elf, and wizard) in an attempt to steal their powers, but rescues them in the nick of time while sacrificing his own life. Naturally, as this is a game about dealing death on a massive scale, this event triggers all kinds of beasts to stalk the land, while the emperor's advisors turn into twisted versions of their former selves and must be dealt with one by one (can you say boss battles?). For a "Gauntlet" game, the story is quite complex - but obviously that's not saying much when you consider that "Gauntlet" has rarely had anything that even resembled a storyline playing behind its action.

In its newest format, "Gauntlet" plays like some diabolical concoction of its namesake and Sega's "Golden Axe" series (itself about to be updated), with a dash of the movie-licensed "Lord of the Rings" games thrown into the mix. Surprisingly, this is the first game in the series to remove the overhead, top-down perspective that is a franchise tradition. Admittedly, that does make it feel less like "Gauntlet," which purists may frown upon, but at the same time the perspective works quite well. It provides a good view of you and your surroundings, which is nice indeed because the graphics on display here are quite pleasing to the eye.

Like its storyline, the gameplay in "Seven Sorrows" is simple. Simple in a charming way, but nonetheless mindless. You select one of the four titular heroes, plunge into the game and begin killing everything in sight. This is the very same formula that spawned "Diablo" and countless other variations, and it's still fun after all these years. All of the heroes have their own unique skills and attacks (though they aren't as different as they first appear to be), including unlimited ranged attacks (countless axes for the warrior, countless arrows for the elf, etc., etc.). Though a few new tricks have been thrown in, you'll probably stick to the basics because they prove to be so effective. The heroes do gain new abilities and attributes in between missions, and while this is a nice touch it ultimately stands on the shallow end of roleplaying.

Strange though it may seem, "Seven Sorrows" is actually less cerebral than Midway's last entry in the franchise, "Dark Legacy," which is saying something. Levels are arranged in a linear fashion, and gone are the winding labyrinths that we used to know. What's more, many of the special items and treasures have been plucked out, leaving just the basics - gold to purchase new skills with, and food to replenish health. Fortunately the monster spawners remain in tact, constantly generating foes until they are destroyed, and one improvement to the series is that you no longer need to collect keys to open chests. And yes, Death can still appear when you least expect it to up the ante. Still, there's the inescapable feeling that this isn't exactly "Gauntlet," despite some cool nods to past efforts.

Other problems include monsters completely devoid of personality or challenge (although boss encounters are fairly memorable and much more interesting) and a very short campaign with little replay value. That said, the game maintains that strange addictive quality for its duration, especially if two or more friends are playing it side-by-side. The production values are good, and despite the sometimes tedious gameplay the levels themselves are varied and colorful.

"Seven Sorrows" is interesting, as "Gauntlet" purists may sneer at the changes it has made to the franchise, while other players may just not see what the fuss is about. However, there is a fun game to be had here, particularly if you bring a likeminded friend to the melee. I hope, however, that next time Midway combines the best aspects of "Seven Sorrows" with the much more traditional "Dark Legacy." Until then, "Seven Sorrows" should serve its purpose to arcade starved players with an itch to co-op.

If you loved the older Gauntlet games, you'll HATE this one.

If you miss something on a level, you can not go back and replay the level once it is done. There are only limited upgrades to armor and weapons. You can only see what level your character is once you complete a level. You can only purchase attack combinations (and only a few at that) with your gold. We were able to complete the game in 4.5 hours. For $50 I expect a lot more game play.

A message to true gamers: DO NOT BUY!!