The Gauntlet Walkthrough

The game starts off with quite a strange menu screen. The characters / letters is somewhat reminiscent of the Predator's inscriptions (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny Glover, remember?). HOWEVER, when you hover your mouse over them, they turn into perfectly human-readable writings. There's a button for checking the high scores, there's an 'About' button for checking out a bunch of credits, there's the Option button (this is where you can switch off the music, activate Stealth Mode, switch the tutorials on or off, and those are just to name a few). And last but not the least, you will find the Activate button right in the middle of the menu.

The fun and excitement starts when you hit the activate button. Hitting it takes you to The Gauntlet, a pretty interesting 'high score' and stick figure game that tests your reflexes and reaction time. Up, down, left, or right - those are the buttons that you need to press. The obstacles you will go through will have an arrow next to them... indicating which cursor key you need to press. For every obstacle you smash through and dodge, you gain points.

The objective of the game is very straightforward: you need to survive for as long as possible... dodging humps, smashing blocks, jumping through hazards, and those are just to name a few. Do that and you will get a score worthy to be posted at the score board. Getting there, however, is not too easy. The game has quite a few levels on show... more than enough to stave off boredom when you are waiting for your office shift to end. Each time you level up, the pace gets faster and faster. If you are good enough, it will even get to the point that it's so fast and you won't even be shown the arrows you need to press.

If your reflexes, finger speed, and reaction aren't that good, you might feel aggravated or frustrated by The Gauntlet. Either you love it or you hate it - it all depends on you. HOWEVER, if you are good enough to get far and fill the power bar at the top, that's when things get really interesting. There are 2 meters or power bars at the top left corner of the game: the first meter (when you have enough charge) allows you to blast through obstacles, and you do that by pressing Shift. The second meter, on the other hand, turns into something like an invincible charging locomotive that crushes and smashes everything before him. In any case, whichever bar you use, you get some level of invulnerability.

Be careful, however, as these are limited. Once the bar runs out, you need to fill them back again by dodging and smashing obstacles using your arrow keys. With that in mind, it's highly recommended that you don't waste it and save it for the harder and faster levels... which is where I usually have trouble.

The only minor hiccup, in my opinion, is that when you get hit by one of the data blocks and stumble, the amount of time you go invulnerable and nearly invisible is sometimes not enough to let you get your grip back into things. This is very true when you are at the faster stages. It's hard to recover and press the arrow button that you need to press. Well, I guess that's all part of the game. After all, The Gauntlet is a stickman game that's out to test your reflexes and reaction time (something which I'm not too good at).

Summing things up, this is a very good 'high score' game that makes the saying "Practice Makes Perfect" so true. You can pick it up when you are bored, set it aside when you are done, and go back to it sometime later. No commitments, just pure block-smashing fun. If you die, that's ok. Your score will be shown and just hit the Activate button to get back into the game. The Gauntlet is HIGHLY recommended if you are going to ask me.