Golden Axe:Beast Rider

yojo! · Post by **yojo!** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:32 pm

Anyone played it yet ? another butchered franchise ?

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:27 pm

I wonder if it's anything like the recent 3D Altered Beast was reputed to be (i.e. clumsy slash horrible). It should be better.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:31 pm

It's brown.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:45 pm

Vexorg wrote:It's brown.

Altered Beast had ICE VALLEYS (at least in the trailer thingy I saw once)

blue-and-white
ICE
fucking
VALLEYS

P_HAT · Post by **P_HAT** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:15 pm

Vexorg wrote:It's brown.

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Tue Oct 14, 2008 10:25 pm

P_HAT wrote:
Vexorg wrote:It's brown.

You could say that for all new games that are out.

yojo! · Post by **yojo!** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:20 am

I hope they made the arcade version unlockable as a bonus.

benstylus · Post by **benstylus** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 1:55 am

yojo! wrote:Anyone played it yet ? another butchered franchise ?

can't be any worse than the sega ages ps2 remake of the game.

but seriously, Sega really hasn't done anything of note with the Golden Axe franchise for about 15 years (when they released Revenge of Death Adder in the arcades).

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:48 am

benstylus wrote:but seriously, Sega really hasn't done anything of note with the Golden Axe franchise for about 15 years (when they released Revenge of Death Adder in the arcades).

for me that was the last great Golden axe game. its one of the PCBs I intend on buying in the future

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:55 am

Too bad Revenge of Death Adder never got ported. That is one sweet game.

dpful · Post by **dpful** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:01 am

Personal peave about GG:RODA is how it makes you go back and play the levels you skipped, making the game crazy long (too long).
I saw a poster for beast rider and got stoked. Anyone played it? How bad is it?

yojo! · Post by **yojo!** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:08 am

Come to think of it; Sega rarely fucked up their arcade games back in the 80s; Sonic Boom might be the only crappy one; but everything else is still pretty awesome. My personal favorite is Dynamite Dux.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:41 pm

Been playing this for about 2.5 hours this morning.

It's... ok.

I don't like the main character, I think she's ugly and lacks charm. I think that you should have been able to choose from three different characters, but I suppose that would've affected the story... slightly.

It suffers from the kind of next gen shit that pisses me off: invisible walls and some stuff you can jump over and some you can't. Lacks fluidity too, but then I suppose it would've been a bit of rip to have her auto target like Ninja Gaiden.

BUT, when you take a look back at the original Golden Axe, it doesn't really deviate too much from the path. It staves off repetition by throwing a few tasks into the mix (nothing taxing), and sometimes you need to negotiate opening doors and stuff while things are attacking.

You have two different counters, which are clearly there to confuse you. Blue attacks = RB, Orange = LB

I don't know why it's an 18. There's some bare boobies, but they're on corpses, and the blood is pretty comic book the way it explodes all over the place.

So its standard fare - really basic as a game. Only place it wins is nostalgia, because the music, landscapes (at least after the bland 1st level) and throwbacks to the original (including the constant mentioning of Death Adder) make it engaging.
Although initially it really doesn't do itself any favours, after you slay a few things here and there and get on a few of the beasts (which are admittedly, pretty cool) it starts to feel like Golden Axe.

Problem is newbies who didn't play the original won't get much from it. It'll just be a repetitive slasher, with some dodgy scripting and some little goblin fuckers who are annoying as hell to whack any potions out of.

I'm going for a 6 for those guys, but a 7.5 if you're a big Golden Axe fan.
It's still got so many missed opportunities its annoying - it's basically Ninja Gaiden 2, Golden Axe edition in terms of its overall design (at least that's the game I can relate it to most closely) but it doesn't have as much variety as NG. I wanted some fleshing out of the land - climbing walls, flying on dragons. It would've been cool to stop in some villages and stuff too.
And where the fuck are the bosses?!

Mildly amusing to crack through once (the levels are stupidly long, but I have a feeling there aren't many of them) and Sega have turned out worse recently, that's for sure - but it still feels like a wasted license on the whole.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:53 pm

There's some bare boobies, but they're on corpses

theres there R18 right there dude. Corpse titties are a no no for sure.

thats pretty bad that theres no bosses at all

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 5:10 pm

Lordstar wrote:
There's some bare boobies, but they're on corpses
theres there R18 right there dude. Corpse titties are a no no for sure.

thats pretty bad that theres no bosses at all

Yeah, but they're only little corpses. I've seen worse shit in 15 rated films.

No bosses is ass, I know! It's not that the game is really easy (you'll die a few times, and it's really tough on 'hero' or whatever it's called) but bosses are a requirement! There might be some later, who knows.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 5:31 pm

UPDATE:

No it's getting shit now. The combat is fucking annoying, especially when things keep shooting you off screen, and the parry never seems to work properly (she just blocks, it only ever works on a fluke when there's about 8 people attacking you at the same time.)

It's atmospheric, but maybe a little too much like the original in the sense it's just so basic. No additional weapons to wield, moves to learn - nothing.
It's like retro but new.

I don't see this going down well.

I'd give it more like a 5 now and a 6.5 for Golden Axe freaks.

TigerCraneFist · Post by **TigerCraneFist** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:57 pm

i never played it but I worked on it here in SF and I have to say it was trash..... Secret level raped this one the same way they raped Final Fight.

The concept art for this game however is top notch and was done by massive black who are some really talented dudes. Just goes to show..... great vision does not ever dictate a good game... too many 3d techs with no artistic talent or creative vision I guess.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:04 pm

If that's the art that appears in-between the stages, I couldn't stop thinking "Why the hell doesn't the game look like this!"

No_not_like_Quake · Post by **No_not_like_Quake** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:04 pm

I'm getting the impression that Secret Level is a shit developer and should be dropped by Sega. Or tell them to unshitify themselves, post haste.

yojo! · Post by **yojo!** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:27 pm

So to make a long story short it looks like people at Sega outdid themselves again. great.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:32 pm

Sega are a shadow of their former selves. Pretty much everything they've done of late has been totally and utterly ass.

Sales however, are up...

Says something about gamers of today I suppose.

PainAmplifier · Post by **PainAmplifier** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:19 am

I rented this one over the weekend for the PS3.

No expectations really, other than it was going to be some kind of God of War type clone with ridable things. I got maybe half an hour into it before I had to stop. Literally. The game was starting to make me nauseus. So this makes only the *second* game in my life that has actually made me 'motion sick'. (The first being Half-Life 2) And I'm not prone to motion sickness or travel sickness.

I am going to place the blame for this partially on the graphics, and partially on the camera. First the camera. This was a bit odd, as you move with the left stick, but orient the camera with the right and it doesn't auto adjust at all at least not by default. (All the while still needing to use the buttons to fight.) It kind sounds great, a camera that you have 100% control over...and then you realize that it sucks!

See 100% control is too 'fiddly'. You'll be running past some guys fighting and dodging and then want to circle around them and attack from another side....but *first* you have to re-orient the camera so you can see what you are doing, because it's still pointing in the same direction as before, when what you really want is the damn thing to be fixed to your characters orientation and NOT a map orientation. AKA, behind and above, so you can see all around you. (At least until things are all dead and you want to look around.)

And that comes around to the brown....just about every damn thing in the game is brown! From the hair on her head (red Brown) to the chaps she wears (red brown again) to the dirt (light brown) to the statues (pale brown) and just about everything else. They have trees and grass in the game...would it have killed them to make them more *green*? Ok, so it's supposed to be a 'dry' area, I can deal...but why not some colorful wild flowers to break things up a bit? BAD, BAD, BAD art direction. This should have been noticed and adjusted for loooong ago. Especially since it's been a big internet gripe for quite some time now. The key thing we are missing though isn't just light/dark or brown/green but CONTRAST between the two.

So anyway, I tried running around with both hands on the sticks until I got to a fight, but that just made everything worse. There are long periods of dullness between set fights and running everywhere was old before I got anywhere. And the dual movement (character/camera) contributed to the motion sickness I think.

Combat....excruciationly boring...and cheap. Almost nothing couldn't be solved early on with 'quick stabs'. I slaughtered a bunch of dudes in the first arena without a scratch before I realized I HAD to do 5 block, 5 parries and 5 combo things before they would let me go forward. Then once you got to the mage mobs, it was a matter of rushing them, and killing them before they could pick you off, becuse the melee was so stupid they could be mostly ignored for a short while, while the mages had huge range and auto-targetting spells that would mess you up if you didn't deal with them even with their loooong time between casts.

And the beasts....I think they mis-named them...they should be called pinata's. Because they had crap for health and would die extremely fast to attacks, while their turn radius /movement is like trying to navigate a school bus. You'd run up hit something, and then anything not dead would come over and beat the crap out of you while you were trying to maneuver or turn and couldn't do crap about it. Plus the whole, 'need a beast' to destroy gates was stupidly artificial and felt like the old color key -> color door thing only more stupifying.

Oh, and both beasts I found were another shade of mud-pink-brown. Did I mention the brown before? If not, here it is again...BROWN.

But worst of all to my mind...was the sheer bloody awefulness of the dialog/script. I've seen cheap B grade movies made using actual plastic dinosaur toys that have more 'life' than the dreck I had to suffer through before I quit. Right from the start you are blasted by cliche after tired cliche. If the old 2d GA games did something right, it was that they didn't bother with a story, just a thin premise and then got the hell out of the way of the hack and slash action.

I can sum this game up in three words. Big Brown Mediocrity.

DEL · Post by **DEL** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:24 pm

^Ok so its brown

and its 3rd Person (3D)

They did this to Rygar didn't they? (not SEGA) - Turned it 3D.

As far as I'm concerned, 3D is not a sequel to a 2D game.
The industry is still believing that 2D won't sell.

D · Post by D » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:32 pm

DEL wrote:As far as I'm concerned, 3D is not a sequel to a 2D game.

+1

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:36 pm

could you imagine a scroling beat em up with hand drawn sprites HD like golden axe with a basic combo system.

fuck me that would rock so hard

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:51 pm

D wrote:
DEL wrote:As far as I'm concerned, 3D is not a sequel to a 2D game.
+1

+2

And I concur with all of painamplifier's points. You can orient the stick to get behind the character by clicking it in, but it does little to solve the constant need to correct it directionally.

I didn't find the beasts were that bad - they have about as much health and range as they did in the original Golden Axe, and if they die, there's usually another just around the corner. But the variety of beasts is useless -there are very few types in the game and they don't do much.

If only people would follow Capcom's Mega Man 9 route and start investing in small teams to do proper full on sequels to some of the all time classics. I'd pretty much kill for a freshly drawn 2D Streets of Rage 4 with a sick drum & bass soundtrack.

JBC · Post by **JBC** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:47 pm

I rented it for 360 because they were out of Dead Space. Shit is broken as fuck. I fell through floors, walked through walls, got stuck in things, the sky turns into a digital glitchy mess on almost every level. This is not to mention that even if it wasn't broken it would still be shitty, repetitive, boring gameplay. I did end up finishing it just out of curiosity, but i had that staring at a train wreck feeling the whole way though.

Thanks for fucking up Golden Axe. Another Sega property is dead to me.

gameoverDude · Post by **gameoverDude** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 7:27 pm

I don't really have my hopes on GA:BR from what I'm reading here. Sega should've gone with Dimps, who made the Xbox Spikeout: Battle Street and has also recently polished off Street Fighter IV. A 2D Golden Axe sequel with combos, some juggling, a little blood, and maybe an occasional dismemberment would be good.

Screw Secret Level. Even the several years old Naomi game Slash Out is looking better than this. Sega also fucked up in not porting this one to Dreamcast, but they should give it a chance on XBLA/PSN.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 9:57 pm

D wrote:
DEL wrote:As far as I'm concerned, 3D is not a sequel to a 2D game.
+1

-1

zeruda, metroid, etc.

Sega does seem to have some difficulty making the translation, though.

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 11:09 pm

Skykid wrote:Says something about gamers of today I suppose.

Some guy once told me Daytona USA was a poor game because it was too colorful. Today's gamers... *sighs*

shmups.system11.org

Golden Axe:Beast Rider

Golden Axe:Beast Rider

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