Golden Axe: Beast Rider (PS3) Review

Golden Axe: Beast Rider is the latest game being developed under the Golden Axe franchise (5^th to be exact, excluding dodgy spin-offs.) The game was originally well known for being a side scrolling hack n slash game, however since then its changed to a 3^rd person view slash the crap out of everything and surprisingly works quite well. When I learnt about the games release, I was hoping there would be co-op within it like the original, but unfortunately not. However don’t let this little issue but you off it though.

Read on to find my review of Golden Axe: Beast Rider for the Playstation 3…

Golden Axe: Beast Rider’s story line is just something which I could not follow; the game just seemed to drift away from it and just let you kill enemies as they kept spawning around you. All I understood from playing it is that, that Death Adder has returned and he’s being a grand A ass hole within the universe that Golden Axe is set. Also you play as the returning character Tyris, the female Amazon warrior from the original games, which is always a good thing.

One thing which did shock me while playing this game is gore, when I first played it I didn’t actually realize the game had an 18 rating. Don’t get me wrong here, the gore isn’t a bad thing I just didn’t realize there was actually going to be this much. After saying that I bet you think I’m going to say it was crap aren’t you? Wrong. It looks fantastic, what more do you really want from a game? Barbarian women with quite large breasts in a skimpy outfit, chopping the limbs of her enemies and the blood spraying everywhere, its brilliant!

Another part of the game which can not be praised enough is the cut scenes during the game; I was actually blown away at how good they look. If you have read my reviews before, you’ll know that this sort of thing doesn’t usually bother me but this is how much it impressed me; it gets its own section. One of the very first opening cut scenes to the game which describes part of the story looks fucking astonishing, all the character animations look so fluid and life like and the lighting is as close to perfect as it comes. If your not actually interested in the title, at least buy it just to watch these cut scenes!

My praise’s are now about to finish, and the ranting to begin. I’m sorry to say that parts of the game really does look unpolished which is a big disappointment considering how good other parts look. It’s mainly the detail (and textures) of objects within the game such as scenery just seems to be so plain and have not much shading to it.

The main thing I leant while playing this game is to play it in bursts, the general game play is fairly repetitive as its just hitting the same 2 buttons and tapping either the left or right shoulder button to dodge the specific attack. The countering system could of worked well, if it wasn’t for the parrying system which just didn’t work. When the enemies weapon went blue you were meant to slap the shoulder button to make her parry, however she would only hold the stance for half a second and you’d just get hammered into the ground because she didn’t hold the pose for long enough.

I’m going to sound like a hypocrite right now as I’ve just said that it’s repetitive, however during the game there is parts which make the game extremely fun and you can go on for a long time. The best example of this is beast riding (note: the games title) through out the game you can summon creatures which you ride from specific portals/switches, the creatures in which you can ride range from a fire breathing dragon with a scorpion tale to a cat/lion thing which can turn invisible and pounce onto its enemies and rip it to shreds.

My worst enemy is any game is frame rate issue’s, and this game in places suffers severely. Whenever shit goes down, multiple enemies being sliced in half and blood spraying everywhere and occasional explosions the game will either slow down or just stop completely to catch up with itself, which is extremely annoying. Also the games difficulty curve is ridiculous, I had my ass handed to me numerous times through out the campaign on normal difficulty, I don’t dare try the harder difficulties

The voice acting in the game was thankfully at least bareable, but at the same time during the segments of the game where you watched a character speak I kept noticing the words and lips go out of sync which was incredibly annoying to look at. However I must throw it out there, it was fantastic to hear a sword chop someone’s limb off and for the person squeal like a bitch for mercy. (which obviously, I wasn’t going to show.)

One thing which I did enjoy was the fact that the game attempted to add replay ability to itself by putting in something called, ‘Trials of Tyrus’ Basically in these area’s you would have wave after wave of enemy sent at you and eventually (if you survive,) you would finish the area, you are only able to unlock the Trials of Tyrus by progressing through the story. In all honesty other than what I just listed in the paragraph above there isn’t really much else replay value to it, the only reason other than what I stated is to go back and try and figure what the hell actually happened through out the story.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider is a title which had a lot of potential, however (like star wars: the force unleashed) was crappily made and had some serious flaws which is why it suffers from low scores. If you are able to ignore the bugs within the game and the frustrating combat system it is at least worth a rent, however if you’re a fan of the series I would advise for you not to check it out as it pretty much bitch slapped you in the face as this game is nothing compared to the original ones.

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