Having someone like John Romero on-board a project in the long-running Gauntlet franchise sort of sounds like the Pope working at a Baskin Robbins and blessing all the pistachio ice cream. It's a bit unexpected for someone of that stature to be there, pulling off a bit of their magic. Granted, Romero walked away from the project before its completion, probably due to creative differences with the other members of the team, but you can kind of sense his work in Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, the latest title in Midway's monster-killing, spell-producing adventure series. It's easily a mile ahead of what Dark Legacy accomplished years ago, but one might find their plate a bit more full than they wanted.

When Dark Legacy came out years ago for consoles, many loved its multiplayer aspect, myself included. But the game's design was somewhat average, with stunted animation, muted colors (especially on the GameCube edition, which, oddly enough, is the most sought-after one), and horrible sound processing. It wallowed in its simplicity, just as the Atari arcade classic had done so many years ago. Well, Seven Sorrows takes a different route.

That's because the game is loaded with a storyline filled with a bunch of malarchy. It seems that a ruler from long ago was turned upon by his advisors, leaving seven sorrows unleashed upon the world and the advisors making sure that such sorrows maintained their hold across the land. To resolve this, the slain leader assigns four heroes- an elf, a wizard, a valkyrie, and a warrior, to fight these sorrows and free the land from disorder. It sounds like a complication of the original Gauntlet storyline, and, to be quite honest, it is. Some may like it, but others will want to skip all the hubbub and just get into the play.

And good news for them- the game plays just like older, classic Gauntlet games. Each character has a number of hack n' slash attacks to their credit, including projectile, launch, and some strong and weak attacks. It's not much at first, but they can be chained together to create some heavy damage, and power-up options are available to make the characters even stronger and allow them to chain together some vicious combos. It's not rocket science, but it is satisfactory hack n' slash action that fortunately avoids the glut of other useless brawling games in the same market. I guess Midway's taking a chunk out of the success of their Shaolin Monks game and spreading it around.

The game looks terrific, with better design put into the game than Dark Legacy could ever employ. The terrain doesn't really change too much, but it is vast and packs plenty of enemies for you to rip through. The animation could've been slightly better, but it still suits the game as is and gives the characters a little more life than they had walking around like steroid buffs in Legacy. My only question about level design revolves around the occasional puzzles you run into, in which you must mow down some enemies and then try to find the hidden key or switch that's dropped.

Then you have the sound. The game is backed by a great score that captures the drama of a title such as this, and the sound effects are razor-sharp with all sorts of weapon effects. But some of these quotes are a little out of hand. I can understand that Midway was trying to capture the glory of some hilarious stuff from the older Gauntlets, but, really, "save me that food"? Maybe I don't WANT to save you that food, have you considered that? And how come when I shoot the food, no one says "Someone...shot the food"? OK, so it's cheese, but it's my cheese, and I want a sandwich. Heh, never mind.

The big draw for Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows is the one thing working in its favor for replayability, and that's its support for online play. The game fully supports multiple players for Xbox Live, and the play works rather well through the service, as you team up with other party members and work to get the highest score on the team. Past that, there's not too much to revisit once the seven sorrows are wiped away, although there's always the feeling of revisiting a classic, like the original Gauntlet itself. And I still play that.

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows is a good reimagining of the franchise, although there are some areas that the enhancements weren't really necessary. Did we need an over-dramatic storyline to pair up with the action? No, not really, but there it is. Oh, well, at least it's not Dark Legacy II, but rather an entity of its own that packs hours of gameplay which are worthy of your attention. Especially if you like shooting food. Take that, you damn wedge of cheese!