Among the co-operative games people have mentioned for the PS2 is Midway's Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. This is a home version of the fourth Gauntlet arcade game, the previous three being Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, and Gauntlet Legends. Starting with Legends, the series moved into a fully 3D world but kept the classic hack-and-cast gameplay. I haven't been able to tear Bob away for some gaming lately -- he just gives me the finger and mumbles incomprehensibly about "a thesis" and "a wedding". Undaunted, I took it upon myself to forego the co-op and brave it alone. Despite sticking solidly to its roots and improving graphics over gameplay, I found Gauntlet: Dark Legacy to be fun for the brief time I've had to play. For longer periods, I can see why I'd want a colleague to play along with me.

For the uninitiated, Gauntlet draws loosely from the Dungeons & Dragons world and pits you (a warrior or wizard or elf or valkyrie) against a series of enemy-infested dungeons levels. You damage and kill the enemies, which spawn from monster generators, with hand-to-hand or with a missile attacks or with magic potions. Health counts down to zero slowly, and can be replenished with food or extra quarters. Up to four players can make a party and travel through the dungeons together. Gauntlet Legends added the 3D world and the ability to save your character to the arcade machine and return to it later with a username and password.

While I'm sure there are some differences, Dark Legacy seems just like Legends. Although the 3D view is mostly a gimmick, I enjoyed the visual upgrade. The maps are really just 2D surfaces with some elevation differences to give a feeling of three dimensions; in the sense that the levels are really 2D, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy is not that much different from the original Gauntlet. Some of the animation seems a tad choppy and there is a general feeling of sluggishness from time to time. On the other hand, the camerawork has been excellent, panning at just the right times and staying at just the right view to allow me to concentrate on bashing bad guys.

All of the classic Gauntlet features are here: treasure chests, poisoned food, monster generators, Death, destructible walls, four-player co-op, and the deep-voiced announcer. These are just as fun as they were almost 20 years ago, and fortunately there have been some additions. You can now buy items between levels, to put that gold you've collected to some use. Your character earns levels, but the effects of this feature aren't clear to me. And there are special items to pick up along the way, although the mechanics of all this still isn't clear to me.

They've also wrapped it in a story, which is a complete waste so far. Some evil guy let another evil guy out of his eternal prison and now the second evil guy has killed the first and is planning to do something awful. I am supposed to collect crystals and put the second guy back in his place. Or something along those lines, give or take an evil guy. They should have just concentrated on good action and not tried to make up a crappy story to go with it.

And how about that action? Well, it's fun for a while, but I could do with some company while I'm doing it. It's not that I don't like sending evil spawn back whence they came, mind you. I just think that I can only whack through so many fields of identical enemies before I begin to zone out. I expected more, to be honest. The game isn't done, by a long shot: I'd guess I've got at least a dozen hours to go, given how many crystals I've gathered so far.

Two more random points I couldn't fit in elsewhere: controls and save game files. Any game that has a control scheme called "Robotron Controls" already has a leg up in my house. Way to remember your roots there, Midway! On a less positive note, the programmers could have reduced the save game file from 283Kb down to something reasonable. It's just freaking ridiculous that this single PS2 game's save file requires more than twice the total space on one of the original PSX memory cards. A few stats...a username with less than 10 characters...the levels I've opened...it's not storing that much information, for crying out loud!

When Bob gets back from whatever it is he has to do, I'll cajole him into playing for an hour and report back then.