These are unlocked by finding “tribute” throughout the stages. There are approximately a dozen weapons, each of which acts the same way but has different properties. The strikes lack impact, and everything just feels flimsy. The fighting is fairly simple: in addition to weak and strong attacks, there is a “knock back” attack executed by pressing both buttons. Tyris simply chooses a nearby enemy and attempts to follow it, although even this is clumsily implemented. This is a problem because there’s no ability to lock on to foes.

But unlike conceptually similar titles such as Devil May Cry and God of War, which use fixed camera angles, Beast Rider primarily relies on a user-controlled camera, which never quite feels right. As expected, the side-scrolling viewpoint has been replaced with fully 3D action, putting it more in line with contemporary games. The game is divided into several chapters, most of which are subdivided into several “challenges”, which act as checkpoints. But outside of these references, and some vague attempts to weave together the storylines of the previous games – the main goal is to assemble the broken Golden Axe – the connections to the older games are fairly sparse. The classic “coin insert” sound effect even shows up. Enemies also turn stone grey after being slain, although they disappear shortly thereafter. The gnomes also appear in certain areas, giving up magic and meat when attacked, but also poison in later segments. Death Adder is the penultimate foe, and many of the enemies are similar to the old games. Other elements from the 16-bit games are also present. Gilius Thunderhead (whose best line of dialogue is: “By my balls, girl, I thought you were dead!”) and Ax Battler (officially named “Tarik”, perhaps in a nod to the Master System conversion) are only present in cutscenes. The second biggest disappointment is that only Tyris Flare is available as a playable character, though the others take part in the story. The biggest disappointment is a complete lack of cooperative play.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider is a sub-par hack-and-slash sharing only the most basic of elements with its predecessors. Their track record was not great, given that they created the ghastly-but-bestselling Iron Man movie tie-in game, and fans panicked that yet another Western developer would screw up a classic Japanese franchise.Īs it turns out, their fears were not unfounded. In 2008 Sega resurrected the Golden Axe license for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, giving it to developer Secret Level.

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