Golden Axe: Beast Rider: Xbox 360

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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.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider: Xbox 360

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me, i've played much worse. i give it 6/10.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider: Xbox 360

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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.