Your dinosaur pal is even more stupid than he looks.Įnemies are dim-witted, and inhabit some of the most drearily designed levels it's been my misfortune to explore. Judged purely as a melee fighter, this new Golden Axe is demonstrably worse than pretty much all its rivals. There's absolutely no style, grace or depth to the fighting - just a bunch of concepts half-borrowed from far better games. More often than not you're simply pummelled from all sides and resort to button-mashing to clear your way out. The game claims to have a fluid combo system, so that attack patterns can be broken at any time and chained into something else should the situation demand it, but it never really works that way. It doesn't even make sense - why would you be unable to evade only one kind of attack, or block another? Trouble is, the button response is fussy and it's entirely possible to be blocking one attack and have no chance to respond to another coming from a different direction. Different enemy attacks require different responses - parry or evade - and you have to press the correct shoulder button when the attack starts, helpfully flashing either blue or orange as it begins. As well as the expected fast/strong attack choices, you also have a horribly compromised combo and defence system with which to contend. Ooh, a blue attack! You can parry those, but not evade them. It's actually best to jump on, use them to smash whatever predictable barrier has appeared in your way, and then jump off again. Rather than being majestic mounts that allow you to crush everything in your path, these poor dumb animals prove to be a hindrance to progress whenever you're required to use them. ![]() Ride them into battle and you'll likely be knocked off instantly, only for an enemy to jump on board, when suddenly the beast becomes almost impervious to injury. They also have special attacks that reduce their health whenever you use them. Their health is pathetically low, and they're even more vulnerable to damage than the lithe and nearly naked young woman riding on their backs. The beasts, for example, are not only a nightmare to control but they're apparently made from tissue paper and plasticine. Nothing here feels intuitive, inviting or even fun. ![]() In fact, it's hard to find a single aspect of the gameplay that hasn't been grossly mishandled in some vital way. ![]() You can ride on a variety of beasts, but they're sluggish to control. You can throw the Golden Axe to hit switches and other items, but it's slow to aim. You can summon up magical attacks, which are a pain to aim. It takes its name from a classic arcade game but everything else is generic and bland, a bargain basement facsimile of, for some reason, Heavenly Sword.Īs in Sony's decent but forgettable romp, our heroine is a buxom flame-haired warrior, set loose in a button-mashing hackandslash environment to carve her way through hordes of enemies with a fabled magical weapon. ![]() Golden Axe: Beast Rider is the sort of lazy, depressing remake that used to be the norm. And here comes SEGA - having got it so right with After Burner on the PSP - once again flailing around and looking hopelessly out of touch. Capcom brought back a slew of their 1980s classics, with Commando, 1942, Bionic Commando and Mega Man all receiving good to great retro-styled modern sequels. Namco gave us Pac-Man Championship Edition and Galaga Legions, both classic in style yet undeniably modern in construction. Over the last year or so, it seems as if many publishers have finally got a handle on the retro revival.
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