Golden Axe Beast Rider ( Average Interesting )

From the “I didn’t even know this game was coming out” department comes SEGA’s Golden Axe: Beast Rider. We’re not exactly sure why the hype machine hasn’t been set into full-swing for a title within a franchise with some real history behind it, but nevertheless, Golden Axe: Beast Rider is in stores right now. For those of you not quite ready to be put out to pasture, Golden Axe is a franchise that originated in SEGA’s arcade heyday—circa 1987.

Golden Axe dropped at the end of an impressive run for the System 16 hardware (the ‘16’ representing 16 bits), which included huge arcade hits for big blue. System 16 arcade ROM’s transferred nicely to the SEGA Genesis home console too; nice enough, in face, to put the “Mega Drive” into console’s top spot during the late 80’s. Golden Axe was like a barbarian version of Altered Beast: 16 bit hacking and slashing at its grandest. The undeveloped story revolves around three playable, medieval archetypes: barbarian, dwarf and amazon. Along with bladed attacks, each character can conjure up magic once potion vials are collected. The magic is tiered so that its effects become more powerful as potion vials are rationed.

Golden Axe also smattered in some beast riding in order to keep the on-foot button mashing form getting old. Weird, mountable beings can throw fire and electricity, do tail whips and bull-rushes, and generally help the heroes become a bigger threat when outnumbered by the enemy (which is often). As developer of the first HD adventure for the franchise, Secret Level was asked to make a modern, third-person action game that harkens back to Golden Axe’s roots on a regular basis. Golden Axe: Beast Rider harkens just fine, but technical anomalies and the resultant lack of serious visual and gameplay prowess keep it from reaching Ninja Gaiden levels of remade glory. The adventures of Golden Axe: Beast Rider focus on Amazonian Tyris Flare for the playable, and the story elements which still involve the Death Adder (Golden Axe’s original final boss) and his evil bidding.

In terms of the story and its development, Golden Axe: Beast Rider isn’t too shabby. The game is steeped in some solid, medieval lore which is heavy on mysticism. Full cut scenes between levels and quick, in-game “minimatics” (miniature cinematics) have been handled quite well, and do a share of the storytelling. There’s a bit too much of the Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s backdrop revealed in on-screen text (mainly through scrolls strewn about the levels), but overall, it’s an intriguing presentation that gets better as the plot comes to a head. As with most hack-and-slash affairs, users are less interested in the princess getting rescued and more concerned with body count. Golden Axe: Beast Rider gives you plenty of tools for carnage, such as massive, bladed weapons and magic that can be quite nasty as things progress. A simple light/heavy attack system is flanked by separate magic and jump buttons.

Various combos of the melee attack button presses will perform different moves, including spinning slices and uppercut stabs. A “knockback” kick—useful for creating space between you and a foe or escaping a foe— can also be programmed by jamming on both light/heavy attack buttons at the same time. Aerial attacks can also be summoned, but the lack of height on jumps makes these jump attacks hard to master and not that useful. Lastly, magic can be cycled via the d-pad, and can be cast easily with the press of the B button.

You’ll have to play a bit of defense in Golden Axe: Beast Rider as well. This is not only unfortunate because, well, defense means your hero isn’t drawing blood, but also because the system in place is not that fun. Color-coded attacks from enemies (they glow a specific hue when an attack is imminent) are meant to coincide with how a hero should respond defensively. A gold attack needs to be countered with an evasive maneuver, a blue attack can be parried, and a green attack can either be evaded or parried.

Unless your favorite game is Guitar Hero, the last thing you’ll want to do in a third person action game is match button mashes to corresponding colors. You’ll always be one step behind what the enemy is doing too, because this system isn’t overly dynamic. A better system would have been one that allowed active parrying, or one at least as free-form as the offensive palette in Beast Rider. The color-coded system works from the technical side (it won’t punish you if you do what it says, when it says to), but it detracts from the entertaining flow of the gameplay by sucking a bit of creativity out of the combat.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s gameplay also suffers from coding that doesn’t allow it to run as planned. For instance, adding in user-controlled beasts is a nice changeup to Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s action—just as it was in the original game—but this engine becomes far too stressed when asked to handle large numbers of polygons per frame, let alone additional, finely modeled (and sometimes massive) sub-playable characters. The result is visual staccato, and a related lack of smoothness to the combat that, at crucial times, brings the entire affair to its knees. The gameplay isn’t broken to the point where it isn’t entertaining, but you’ll learn to know when things are going to get wonky in Golden Axe: Beast Rider; it’s just enough to dishearten, and cause the user to ponder what this one could have been had a finer sharpening stone be used in the honing process.

From a visual standpoint, Golden Axe: Beast Rider has some merit, but it’s overshadowed by far too much pop-in and framerate stutter. Character models, environments and mountable beasts all come across as statically polished, but once everything is in motion, Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s engine doesn’t seem to be up to the task of handling all that activity. Parts of levels load out of thin air, and almost every time the disc is accessed for data, the game abruptly pauses for a second or two. Paring back the amount of animated bits (swaying foliage and myriad particle effects add to the drag) would have surely helped, but at the cost of Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s robust, aesthetic value. The audio fares better than the visuals in helping Golden Axe: Beast Rider get its point across, however. Solid voice acting and sound effects, not to mention an above average soundtrack, up the ante of SEGA’s hack-n-slash affair. Although Golden Axe: Beast Rider honors its roots and does a nice job of storytelling, it fails to deliver on the all-important technical side of things.

There’s some fun to be had here due to the might of Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s magic and the gruesome dismemberment that occurs in every battle, but the overall feeling is that there’s not enough sound substance here to justify its asking price. Pick Golden Axe: Beast Rider up if you’ve beat Ninja Gaiden 2 and need a fix of button mashing and blood. The rest of you would be better off giving Golden Axe: Beast Rider a rent first before committing to the buy. Or perhaps just save that loot and buy an original Golden Axe cabinet to relive the franchise’s 16-bit glory.

Grab The Golden Axe Beast Rider here