All I can Say Is "Wow"

A little while ago, we here at Gamer Think decided it would be entertaining to play some of the worst games of this generation and then review them. The idea being that we all know what makes a good game, but less about what makes a game truly terrible. So each person here assigned the other a game that has a terrible meta review; I was assigned Golden Axe: Beast Rider by Will. Sadly we are no longer friends.

I have many fond memories of the original Golden Axe in the arcades over a decade ago when I gladly donated rolls of quarters to it. Get a couple friends together, argue over who has to play as the chick, and begin destroying everything. Just some good old fashion fun. Attempting to bank of the kind of nostalgia that people like me feel for the game, Sega brought it back and "updated" it for the current consoles. It could have sold millions and made Sega incredible profits even in this down economy, but there is just one problem. It sucks.

But where to begin? I think we can start with the story. The Death Adder is back and has attacked your main character, Tyris', Amazonian tribe, cult-thing and taken the titan you worship. Apparently Death Adder hates clans of attractive, barely clothed women. Oh yeah, forgot, you can only play as Tyris the Amazon, the character no one really wanted to play as in the arcades because she had the shortest reach. The other characters make a reprisal but only in the most limited of ways. Anyway, to destroy Death Adder you need to rebuild the shattered golden axe and...you know what the story is bad, you can really just ignore it.

Ok ok, plenty of games have had terrible stories but really fun to play, but not here. The combat is slow and clunky. Canceling out of moves is almost non-existent and you have few combos and no weapons that play differently (just different coats of paint). So the combat gets boring fast, the only thing that mixes it up is Tyris' ability to deflect/avoid a color-coded enemy attack, but ultimately this means you just end up sitting and waiting for a character to attack, block, hit them, and repeat.

Then there are the beasts, they are in the name after all. You can ride a variety of animals with different attacks and strengths. Some are pretty cool and they can destroy swaths of the enemy. There is just one problem, they control terribly. The best way I can explain how bad it is is to think back to any other game with a swimming section, and how swimming is usually awful because there is no way to easily control a character on three axis. However, this is how beasts control on only two! So you end up running into a group of enemies, attacking through them, sprinting away, turning around and repeating (repetition is this game's m.o.). Its just a bad version of jousting.

Then there is the sound. All I really need to say about sound is that there are really only two sounds for when you hit something with your sword: a squishy sound or a clang noise, that is it. The voice acting sounds like homeless people were hired off the streets and offered Jim Beam in return for a couple hours of yelling into a mic.

Finally, we have the graphics. It looks like an extra layer of shine was put onto an original xbox game. Pop-in is so common you cannot call it a glitch, textures are blurry, and my favorite part was the screen-tearing. Turn too fast, screen tear, use magic, screen tear, do a special attack with a beast, screen tear, even walking gets you screen tear. Its supposed to be gory and gritty, but because it looks so bad its really just laughable.

Going into this I thought this project would be funny and entertaining, but this game just became so hard to play because it just becomes boring. Everything about it is so sub-par it makes the pedestrian look incredible. There were a few positives though, if you are into S&M, this works, and if you are sexually frustrated there is some T&A, that is really it. I truly hate this game.