Calling the game “right at home on the PS4,” Arrowhead game director Emil Englund explained in the official announcement that studio have improved several aspects of the original game for its move to Sony’s console, including more variation “both visually and in monster encounters,” as well as a new mode that lets players “exercise their rights as self-proclaimed monster slayers.”
“Now with more features than any other version,” the Slayer Edition trailer proclaims. “Play with new weapons and battle modes. Play with your friends as never before. Play with PlayStation … just don’t play with your food.” Local cooperative play will be supported in addition to online, replicating the classic shoulder-to-shoulder feeling of the original arcade game.
However, if you purchased Gauntlet when it launched on PC, there’s no need to feel like you got the short end of the stick: the Slayer Edition content will be available for free to those who own the game already, though it was not said if this would coincide with the PlayStation 4 release.
Gauntlet started its life in 1985 as a co-op hack-and-slash arcade game developed by Atari. Up to four players could assume the role of fantasy heroes with varying strengths and weaknesses for some classic dungeon-crawling, monster-slaying, and loot-hunting. This most recent version that was first released in 2014, rebooted to simply Gauntlet, is actually the ninth game in the classic arcade series.
Gauntlet: Slayer Edition launches August 11 digitally on PlayStation 4 for $20, the same price as the PC version of the game on Steam. Pre-ordering the game nets you “Mordok’s Screaming Hammer” and “Reaper’s Visage Helm for the Warrior,” as well. Developer Arrowhead has certainly been busy this year: the studio makes mention in its blog post that it also released Helldivers on PS4 and Vita this year, a game which received a major content update less than two months ago.
