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Golden Axe: Beast Rider | 
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| From: Sega Of America, Inc.
Category: Video Games
List Price: $59.95
Buy New: $22.00
You Save: $37.95 (63%)
New (44) Used (8) from $21.95
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 1917
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: adventure_games
ESRB: Mature
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Xbox 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 68011
Model: 68011
UPC: 010086680119
EAN: 0010086680119
ASIN: B000XJO78Y
Release Date: October 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Quest for vengeance and engage in vicious melee combat in fantasy world | | • | Unleash barbaric killing moves and dismembering attacks | | • | Explore huge, ravaged, destructible landscape | | • | Weapon upgrades and powerful unlockable elemental-based spells and magic | | • | Features never-before seen character skills and abilities |
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| Accessories:
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 My fingers are sore January 3, 2009
Great game, great graphics, very fun to play if you follow GoldenAxe over the years.
 One word to describe this: "Frustrating" December 28, 2008
If I had to describe this game in one word it would be "frustrating." The beasts can't be controlled well, the game continually sends incoherent respawn creatures to surround you in an enclosed area, you are surrounded by environment elements you cannot touch or interact with, the "necessary" defense stuff really is atrocious, and you get money that you never can use. Truly a waste of $$$.
In more detail, the Beasts, which look like smallish dragons, really sound cool, but don't turn well, and LOSE HEALTH whenever you use their special attack. So you're stuck trying to run past the bad guys to run them over. But if you get hit (you WILL get hit), they throw you off the beast, jump on him and start attacking you with your own beast. Basically, they are sort of useless unless you try to run past all the bad guys - but often you have to kill everyone before the next gate opens.
You collect gold, which they call "tribute" for no apparent reason. Whenever I finished a level, I always got a "C" rating - with no explanation of what I did wrong, or how I could have improved. Meaning, it doesn't tell you the percentage of stuff you got, or what the expected time requirement was, etc.
The defense is the worst! You are stuck having to choose "dodge" or "block" throughout most attacks or you get whacked. Worse, when surrounded by TONS of bad guys, you WILL get whacked regardless if you chose right, because they hit you in the back. They often have spell throwers hitting you in the back.
Mana cannot respawn, so you only have a few "spell" points, which are sometimes required to open things. So you really don't end up wanting to use them. AND you have to use this poorly aimed axe thing to hit random targets while enemies fight you.
Truly, I normally love hack and slash games, and especially RPG types. There is no character customization, and every part of this game is...frustrating.
 Sure it's not great but it doesn't deserve all the negative reviews. December 27, 2008
This game is not that bad at all. I have been playing it for a couple days now and I like it. Sure, it's not innovative or original but it's combat is fun enough to keep me playing. Riding the beast is fun but I wish you do more upgrades. You do get different swords and costumes which is nice. The achievements are not easy so there is replay value in it.
Don't get me wrong, I was expecting much more from this title like everyone else but I am still happy with it. The game doesn't deserve the negative reviews it's getting but there are TONS of better games out there (Gears Of War 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Fable 2, etc) and I would only recommend this if you are like me and just buy tons of games or looking for a rental.
 As good as a Golden Axe 3D remake could ever be. December 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/GoldenAxeBR.htm
People get angry when they fight each other for a reason and it isn't just because of the pain inflicted on them in the fight. A fight can take on a life of its own and drag both fighters, kicking and screaming, with it. This is exactly what Golden Axe lets happen while never taking control away from the player. A fight with or without weapons is simple. Each person in a hand to hand or weapons based combat situation essentially has three choices, attack, retreat, or hold your ground. Golden Axe lets the player switch on the fly between all three options thanks to the parry and evade defense system. Golden Axe's combat is not the standard button mashing combat system seen in games like God of War or Devil May Cry. The player will not be rewarded for mashing buttons, being uncoordinated or not paying attention to their surroundings. Even though the fighting techniques are exaggerated and overly dramatic, the sense the player must have for fighting is fairly realistic. Golden Axe is constant combat in the truest sense I have ever seen in an action game. This concept is what will either make or break an individual's enjoyment of the game.
Golden Axe gives these choices in every scenario. Tyris can hold her ground, in which case the player will wait for opponents to attack and either parry or evade as appropriate. This is the only game that I have played that forces the player to either parry or evade based on whether the attack is horizontal or vertical in nature. In Golden Axe, much like real life, if an attack is coming roughly straight down or up the player can evade it by side stepping. Naturally, if the attack is coming from the left or right in a broad stroke, side stepping is less beneficial. As with all video games this is vastly simplified from what can happen in a real fight, where a combatant can both parry and side step at the same time and thus give themselves extra time to deliver the counter blow. Since we're playing with game controllers and not our brains, abbreviating the actual possibilities of a fight is a good thing.
Tyris can retreat, and as is true with a real combat situation, retreating should only be done to recoup and set oneself up for a better position within the fight. By running away and then turning back around when sufficient distance has been made between Tyris and her foes, the player can get all of her opponents in front of her. Obviously this is the best position to be in, as the player now has the option to kick opponents into each other, launch ranged magic, or simply bull charge the group to knock multiple opponents down. From there Tyris can switch back to holding her ground with the parry and evade system or go on the offensive.
On the offensive Tyris can do a normal variety of attacks. The player can tap the weak or strong attack buttons for quick but weak or slow but strong combos respectively. Tyris can also switch back and forth between weak and strong attacks in a chain combo, only the last strike in a combo causes Tyris to pause. The combat mechanic in Golden Axe is designed so that the player may avoid taking damage by means of attacking first, parrying or evading. Only if the player responds to the incoming attack with the wrong defensive option does Tyris become unable to recover. That means whether or not the player thought they should sidestep or throw an attack, if they did it too early or too late, or chose a response that was inferior to the opponents attack, they incur damage. However, Golden Axe allows the player to make up for the mistake of attacking first by means of the parry and evade cancel system, which will immediately switch away from a combination to parry or evade.
This much would be enough that if it were to replace the simple combat system in a game like Grand Theft Auto, the entire game would be better for it. Golden Axe, though, offers more than simple group based combat in the form of the beasts. In homage to the original Golden Axe games, there are four main types of beasts which Tyris will ride throughout every level. The beasts primary function is to give Tyris a shield and more powerful form of attack than fighting on foot would. Secret Level, the game's developer, also designed Golden Axe's levels in such a way that the player would need to use beasts to break down barriers or magic obelisks. Beasts will also naturally be used to get through some of the more dangerous combat scenarios the game creates. Since the beasts don't have the parry or evade system, the easiest way to use them is to run at groups of enemies and attack while running through them. Should any enemies survive that, the player can do a quick sliding turn around while running to make a second, third or even tenth pass until all combatants are defeated. On smaller beasts Tyris can also use her sword to swipe at enemies, which can double up the damage the beast is doing on its own.
Last but certainly not least is Golden Axe's magic system. Tyris is given three main magical options. The first magic, selected with the left digital pad, is a fire missile that acts as a ranged weapon for single or multiple opponents. The second, selected with the right directional pad, is an explosion that bursts all enemies in the immediate area into flames. The third, which is the up position on the directional pad, is the Golden Axe which can be used to hit enemies that are out of range, and must be used to destroy undead enemies before they resurrect. With an adequate grasp of the game's combat system, the magic is a simple but welcome accessory that may be used to clear an area much faster than fighting ever would. All three forms of magic upgrade throughout the game, taking on more powerful forms that eventually kill everything in sight while wiping out Tyris' magic jars.
Having described Golden Axe now in roughly one thousand words, we will move on to the hideous beast that is the mass media's presentation of the game. The media hated Golden Axe Beast Rider giving it an average score of 4.0/10. IGN said that the game had no combos in comparison to games Devil May Cry and God of War, and that the defensive moves were annoying. IGN's Chris Roper didn't understand the concept that a parry is not a block, but a deflection to set up a counter. Team Xbox's Dale Nardozzi and Gamespot's Chris Watter's likewise lambasted Golden Axe's combat system as "unfun." It should be noted that all three failed to describe what was not fun about the game's combat system, which indicates that the reviewers did not understand the game in the first place.
Tyris will only actually parry an attack if the parry button is hit after the enemy attack has begun. This should be obvious, since the parry and evade mechanic makes a distinction between horizontal and vertical attacks. Roper calls this "frustrating" and "annoying" because he has no concept of what a fight actually is. In a fight, even the most well thought out plans can go awry, and that's why being flexible to the ebb and flow of the fight is key to survival.
Being that this is an update to an arcade classic, I find it ironic how the media functions in today's gaming culture. A handful of non-gaming professionals with "personality" can play a game for an unspecified amount of time and tell everybody else not to play it. What's disgusting about this is that it appears as though the gaming public actually obeys them! If people were standing around a Golden Axe arcade machine in 1988 telling everybody in the arcade not to play the game because they thought it was not fun they'd have been laughed at. Read it in a magazine today, and sales figures plummet. Dave Halverson's scathing comments on the subject need not be reiterated.
The only criticism that can be leveled on Golden Axe Beast Rider is its lack of multi-player. Especially since the original series was such a great multi-player experience, and the ending teases the player with the fact of Tyris, Gillius and Ax Battler's alliance, this is a notable exclusion. With that said, nobody has developed a multi-player hack n slash that is as detailed as Golden Axe and seen it succeed. Secret Level did such an admirable job in bringing the series into the HD generation that their achievement should not be marred by what they did not include. The level design and combat system of Golden Axe simply would not have worked in a multiplayer scenario, end of story. If challenging and action packed combat is your thing, pick up Golden Axe Beast Rider for $20 on Amazon. If it isn't please go find yourself a nice story game to play and leave would be classics like these to the professionals.
 Give me the original!!!! November 27, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was one of those kids who used to bring three rolls of quarters with him to the arcade. Golden Axe was a favorite of mine. Although back in the day I used to play the little guy who wielded a giant axe, the girl was great for her powerful magic that she would unleash on the bad guys. When I got the Sega Genesis version, I was hooked. It was just like the original. Also, Golden Axe 2 was a favorite of mine as well. When I heard Golden Axe was coming to Xbox I couldn't hardly wait for it. I bought it. It is sheer disappointment!! You can walk through some debris, UgH! Where was the production team!!! The beasts are clunky to control, fighting skills are very limited.... Magic was nothing to look at either.... Although the scenery was good, as well as the graphics. I would have liked a free roam type of game with this... ***Please re-issue the originals to an Xbox platform!!!**
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