


Successfully pulling them off results in an opportunity for Tyris to counter with a more powerful version of one of the basic moves for serious damage. You can simply run away and avoid the hit which works most of the time, or you can try and block them with the appropriate move if your timing is right. Parrying and blocking depends on the color that flashes on an enemy’s weapon, cluing you in to what to use. We’re not talking the kind of elaborate moves that require a page of dial-a-combos to remember, either, so mashing on the buttons and mixing them up will show you everything that she can do without being creative in the first few minutes of play. You can button mash Tyris’ moves, divided into fast and strong slashes, and chain them into simple combos. The camera doesn’t help, for one, making it easy to miss foes that come from behind. The game conjures up snippets of difficulty which aren’t impossible to overcome, but also come with plenty of cheap tricks that the actual gameplay pulls from the same kind of issues that plagued old school titles with frustrating moments of pure annoyance.
GOLDEN AXE BEAST RIDER SOUNDTRACK SERIES
Gameplay-wise, Golden Axe aspires to bring in some of the thumb blistering, hardcore action that a title such as Itagaki’s Ninja Gaiden series wears as a blood soaked keikogi. So much for a glorious fanfare, not that any of the other tracks are better. To give you an idea of how much music variation there is, the credits loop the same track about four or five different times because it’s so short. The music is probably the most forgettable stuff that I’ve ever heard in a game with its mix of tribal sounds and the rare electric guitar that tries to keep the sleep inducing beat going, feeling as if it were composed in order to meet some design doc requirement that says there has to be music in the game. The city looks great, but forget about exploring because you can't They do come apart with plenty of gory dismemberments satiating your inner barbarian, though. The generic scenery extends right down into the droves of mindless fodder that are thrown against Tyris, all of whom say or mumble the same things in order to further bore the excitement out from your button mashing fingers. Because most of the game takes place in blasted landscapes devoid of life, don’t expect to see much in the way of colors other than brown, dark brown, and grey saturating everything including the screen tearing that occasionally mars the picture. The drab graphics aren’t much better and appear as if they would belong on the previous Xbox, although there are a few memorable set pieces such as a giant turtle shell and an end boss that could have come out from Capcom’s wonder factory. The story actually gets better in the telling towards the end, but whether players will make it that far depends on how much patience they are willing to invest. What dialogue there is in the game is pretty low key, packed with all of the lines that you would expect out of a bad Conan knockoff, but spoken with the kind of passion reserved for Gone With the Wind. But titles such as Heavenly Sword and God of War come packed with plenty of personality which, unfortunately, Golden Axe barely delivers. That’s pretty much it as far as the story is concerned, not that the originals had a lot of narrative to go on, either. I slash your chest, but sparks fly from your feet?!
GOLDEN AXE BEAST RIDER SOUNDTRACK FREE
With ironclad skin, she’ll go off in search of vengeance for the death of her sisterhood at the hands of the nefarious Death Adder and free from his grasp the Dragon Titan that they had all worshiped as a living god. Instead, you play as Tyris Flare, the buxom heroine of the original Golden Axe series who apparently believes as most other female heroes do that wearing less is the best defense against giant bladed weapons. It’s not a 2D side-scroller, nor can you play co-op with a friend or pick who to play as from three different characters. Golden Axe isn’t a follow up to the sequel that came out for the Genesis or in the arcade. Unfortunately, the fun aspects are buried beneath a poor effort to rekindle the hardcore excitement of the previous generations. There are problems within it that support that argument, but it isn’t a cesspool of rejected ideas.

You’ve probably already seen the reviews for Golden Axe: Beast Rider, another franchise from Sega’s revolving door of retro-resurrections and if you had glanced at the scores, you probably think that it has to be the worst game available in this generation.
