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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: $19.96
You Save: $39.99 (67%)
New (35) Used (8) from $19.29
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 488
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
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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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 1 more reviews...
Give me the original!!!! November 27, 2008
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!!!**
Disappointing November 21, 2008
Sega's Golden Axe series was once a revered franchise in the 16-bit days, then just seemed to die off as new generations of consoles came and went. Golden Axe: Beast Rider attempts to put a new spin on Sega's classic series, and utterly fails. Playing as returning heroine Tyris Flare, you are on a journey of revenge against the evil Death Adder. There are hordes of enemies to duke it out with and dismember, but the game is pretty much a bore from beginning to end. Not because of the gameplay itself per se, but just how the game is designed. There are some good looking environments and effects, but much of what you see in Golden Axe just looks bland. It doesn't help that the game's controls are awkward (and occasionally unresponsive) during combat, and especially when trying to handle the game's assortment of beasts. The few high points of Golden Axe are that the game is quite brutal in terms of bloody violence, and there is a decently lengthed quest as well. Getting through it however is a different story all together. One last thing though: where is the co-op mode? I seem to remember half the fun of the old Golden Axe games was teaming up with a pal, and there is no such thing to be found here. All in all, no matter how much of a fan you may be of the original, classic Golden Axe, Golden Axe: Beast Rider is an ultimate failure that doesn't live up to the pedigree of the original in the least, and in the end is best left on the shelf.
 SEGA Should Have Buried This Hatchet-Job November 5, 2008
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
This is one of the worst 360 games, I've seen. I'll start off with the good. The graphics are mediocre, Tyris's run speed is kinda fast, and Death Adder looks cool. Everything else is terrible. This game takes the worst elements of the original Golden Axe and slaps them together at a pathetic attempt to make a next gen game.
Story - 0/10
The game begins with Tyris walking through a barren valley by herself and realizing she's late for a huge ceremony where her Dragon God flies down from the sky and blesses her people. She realizes that being late for this is probably a bad thing and starts to run, but encounters orc-like creatures called, "BOOGEYMEN." Seriously, that's that they're called. She battles her way through the BOOGEYMEN and arrives at the ceremony too late. A group of BOOGEYMEN kill all of the priestesses, knock Tyris out, and kidnap her all mighty Dragon God.
-If your Dragon God gets kidnapped by a band of Orcs, it's time to get a new God.
Later Tyris awakens and the dwarf from the original game is there, pulling an axe out of his chest. He sees Tyris and exclaims, "By my balls, you're alive." Ok, if you're a hot chick who was unconscious and the first thing you hear is a dwarf talking about his testicles, that's not a good thing. Maybe he's saying he resurrected you somehow with his balls, or he is your father, or maybe that's just a contemporary Dwarven expression. Anyway, the Dwarf gives Tyris an axe and says you must find the pieces and reassemble it. Lucky for Tyris, the pieces just snap on. Near the end of the game, Axe Battler from the original game appears and says something like, "Gee, Tyris, I'm sorry your game sucks so bad. See Ya," and he's gone. I think there are 30 lines of bad dialogue in the entire story.
Gameplay - 1/10
In this day and age, developers of real games put the player in an adventure and let them battle their way through it. Golden Axe puts the player in a world and punishes them if they don't do what the designers intended. No attempt is made to make a cohesive world. Instead, the game just stops from time to time and says, "Challenge Complete" and gives you a score, usually telling you that you suck. If you die during a Challenge, you have a LIMITED NUMBER OF CONTINUES that you can use or you must start over. The game also makes every attempt to take cheap shots at the player: Bombs hidden in objectives, poison hidden in chests, near impossible jumps...
Controls - 1/10
The controls are very awkward at best.
A - Jump, B - Mount Beast, X - Light Attack, Y - Heavy Attack, RB - Parry, LB - Evade, D-Pad - Choose Magic, L Trigger - Run, R Trigger - Magic, X+Y = Knockback Attack.
Combat relies heavily on pressing RB, LB, and X+Y. Where do you put your hands to press RB, then X+Y immediately after that?!
Combat - 2/10
You begin AND END the game with 2 combos. XXX for multiple enemies. YYY to do damage to a single enemy. If you delay your presses, you deal extra damage. You can mix and match the X's and Y's, but there's no point. You can't get new moves or new weapon types, so you'd better love pressing XXX or YYY.
Most of the focus of combat is on Defense, which is a lot less fun than thinking about slaughtering enemies. There is NO BLOCK in the game.
Tyris can Parry or Evade. The enemy attacks are color coded. Orange Attacks can be Evaded, Blue can be parried. If you are successful, you can counter attack for extra damage. If you try to Parry a Blue or Evade an Orange, Tyris just stands there and gets beaten up. If no attacks are coming at you, THE BUTTONS DO NOTHING AND YOU ARE IMMOBILE FOR 2 SECONDS. If you are attacking, the Parry and Evade don't take effect until the animation ends, so the best way to fight is to stand still, Parry or Evade, then attack. Boy, I bet you can't wait to experience that! There is no combat manager in the game, so Tyris can be attacked by a Blue and Orange at the same time, which means you get hit and lose your bonus. This reminds Tyris that the world is cruel and unfair.
Beasts - 3/10
Beasts are only in the game about 10% of the time. The beasts are sluggish and clunky and they only have 3 attacks each. X, Y, and X+Y. In some cases, using the X+Y attack drains the beast's health. The beasts are disposable and if Tyris gets knocked off a beast, the weakest enemy can jump on it and ride it, to remind her that she is not special.
Leveling Up - 0/10
At the end of each challenge, you accumulate Gold. If you defend well, you get a bonus to the gold that you pick up. If you get hit once, the bonus drops to zero. This is very frustrating. When you complete a level, you get graded based on damage taken, gold, time, and dismemberment. If you play on NORMAL MODE, the game multiplies your gold by 1/3!!!!!! You only keep 1/3 of your GOLD!!! The background for this screen should have been a giant middle finger! (Hard Mode is x1)
Getting gold, fills a bar at the bottom of the screen. When that fills up, you get what the game decides to give you. You usually get a new outfit for Tyris that looks the same as the one she already has. This reminds Tyris that no matter how hard she tries, she will never get ahead in the world.
Level Design - 0/10
Every level looks the same. From the rocky barren plains, to the dusty barren plains dotted with ruins. In every level, there are spikes that randomly pop in and out of the ground for no apparent reason. Absolutely no attempt is made to make this look like a world. Instead the levels are there to take cheap shots at Tyris. In some levels, while riding a dinosaur, the wind can blow you and the dino off of the cliff.
Opening doors is incredibly confusing. There are 9 different ways to open doors, but there is only 1 way to open each door, and you never really know how you are supposed to open them.
If you ever get lost, the best way to tell if you are headed in the right direction is the slow down. The game drops frames to load in enemies. So, if the game suddenly pauses for a second, that's a good thing. There are invisible walls everywhere, so the levels may look like mass expanses of dirt, but they're linear dirt trails surrounded by dirt.
Bosses 1/10
Almost all the bosses are the same guy. It's a 60 foot tall giant that you attack. After you hit him a few times, he crouches. When he crouches, Tyris kicks him and he goes flying backwards into a fire column to take damage. If Tyris can move a 60 foot tall giant with a kick, why can't she jump more than 5 feet? Perhaps the bosses are made of helium.
Bugs - 10/10
I've seen Tyris get stuck in level geometry. I've seen the game crash. I've heard the sound skip. I've seen Tyris fall out of the world. There are render tears and slowdown. I've also seen an entire palette shift to blue.
Sound - 5/10
The music is ok, but neither feels epic nor atmospheric.
The Ending - 0/10
Tyris catches up with her captured Dragon God and he tells her the final piece of the axe is his soul. She stabs him in the head and does her best Darth Vader Episode 3, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I laughed for a minute. Then you fight Death Adder. The fight is 20 minutes long and makes no sense. But, that's ok because the fight pauses every few minutes and pop-up windows appear giving you detalied instructions on what you are supposed to be doing. Hit him, ride him, make him destroy some statues, then a cutscene plays where Death Adder says, "Fool, I will destroy you!" Tyris replies, "Maybe, but not this day!" Seriously, that's what she says. She chops his head off. Your reward... a skimpy white bikini costume. So, the final scene plays and the Dwarf and Axe are there. Tyris says, "I've lost my land, my god, my people..." But it's hard to take her seriously because she looks like `Fun in the Sun' Tyris who's about to go play beach volleyball and drink something with a little umbrella in it. Axe Battler says, "This is just the beginning." The dwarf starts to talk, but is abruptly cut off by the credits. That's right, the credits interrupt the last cutscene.
The game is rated M for violence, gore, and nudity. Unfortunately, the nudity is only on dead, charred, or dismembered bodies. If you're going to put breasts in a game, put them on living women so the non-necrophiliacs can enjoy them, too.
If you're dying to play a hack and slash game, you should play Ninja Gaiden 2, Devil May Cry 4, Oblivion, Too Human, Viking, The Force Unleashed, Lego Star Wars, Assassin's Creed... then buy a Wii and play Zelda and No More Heroes... then buy Castle Crashers on the Xbox Marketplace... You're better off avoiding this game.
If you feel you must play it, it's only 6-8 hours long and not very difficult.
You might be thinking, "Poisoned Blade, if the game was so bad, why did you finish it?" I did it, so you don't have to.
 not a must-own, but not as bad as people say October 22, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
it's funny. most people who give this game a crap review go on to say "i played for a half hour and shut it off". that's like watching a movie for 3 minutes and saying it's crap. you can't comment on what you don't know. after playing through most of the game (i'm almost done)i can say this game isn't as bad as people say. it's not without some design flaws, but in a game like this, combat is most important, and i find it satisfying. there is a neat parry/evade system with counterattacks that feels good.
here's is the games signature(it isn't riding beasts, been there, done that): in any game, typically when you enter a button sequence for a combo, the attack animation plays out no matter what, leaving you open for damage. in this game, however, you can cancel out of a combo with a parry/evade button press, whichever is most appropriate. in my opinion this is very refreshing.
if you're a fan of the conan-type setting, give this one a whirl. rent before purchase, but trust me, i've played much worse. i give it 6/10.
Should've been titled Golden Axe: Female FURY or something October 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Golden Axe: Beast Rider. Why give the game a title BEAST RIDER? You ride the beast just about as much as you did in the original. I admit there's more variety of beast to ride than the original. Not as good as I expected but WE must remember that Golden Axe was always a (hack & slash)adventure FIGHTING game. The control fighting felt awkward at first. I changed my controller configuration to profile 2. That way my attack buttons were (X&Y) and jump was button (A) and magic was (RT). The parrying & evade is where the art of fighting comes into the game. Once you get that technique mastered you will be able to battle multiple enemies at once. Without learning that technique you will get crushed & killed quickly.The gameplay feels more like Conan. So just to give players an idea of how it is. As far as riding the beast goes ...the same rules apply in this Golden Axe as the originals. Your beast will be killed if it takes too many hits or if you use up the entire beast powerful attacks. Also you can get jacked for your beast just like in the original game. The creatures walk very animal life like as if you really were riding a beast. The story isn't the best and actually starts off rushed. As you progress in the game you obtain the Golden Axe, which starts off as a boomerang until the axe is complete. Overall I don't think it's worth $60 but it's worth $40. It may get repetitive to some just like the original Golden Axe. Just remember it's one of those (hack & slash)adventure fighting games where it's gets better as you progress and LEARN to PARRY & EVADE or just be ready to get frustrated and take the game back for a trade in. Games from the 80's would just chew some of today's videogame players up and spit'em out. Some players don't realize how good they have it now in videogames and some game designers need to expand their imagination a tad more. We have save points, continue as an option and stage select now in just about all games now. Try playing a game for several hours just to die and have to start back at the beginning. Stay on the porch with the puppies if you can't roll with the big dogs. Golden Axe: Beast Rider, decent, but definitely don't expect any type of Gears of War gameplay or graphics. Your feelings may be hurt.
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