Golden Axe: Beast Rider (Sony Playstation 3, 2008)

I was hesitant about playing Golden Axe: Beast Rider. Sega does not have a good reputation these days. Still, armed with a free rental and a recommendation from a trusted source, I went down to my local video-gameria and took a copy home to play.

I was blown away.

This game is far better than I was expecting, indeed, than I hoped. My previous fears that it would be unfinished, or a rehash of the sticky, uncomfortable '80's incarnations were needless waffling. GA:BR is a crisp, beautiful game with above average controls, excellent visuals, and a story that is exactly the right level of depth for a proper scion of the Golden Axe name. The game is downright gorgeous, and understands its audience perfectly. If you came to the game expecting Golden Axe, you'll get it, souped up for 7th-generation home consoles with full, fluid controls and new complexity to enrich the gameplay. If you're a fan of the Conan-style sword-and-sorcery, you'll get it. It's powerfully tempting to spoil what's coming, but I cherish my integrity as a reviewer and say only that those looking for action games, Golden Axe games, and games with good graphics will all be pleased. The game is well-animated, the beast-riding mechanic is fairly well-handled, the enemies are scary and intimidating without being too hard -- the game is great, very immersive and a joy to play and defeat.

Now that I've finished gushing, I need to bring up the bad parts, for there are a few. First and foremost, the learning curve for this game is STEEP. The tutorial level is present, but it fails to educate you in the nuances of the block-and-evade defenses, and those you must discover on your own. Once you master them, though, you'll do fine. It is my intense recommendation that you practice, and make use of the replaying levels option to hone your skills, because some of the fights, as well as the arena mode, are punishingly unforgiving of failure. In some fights, there is an extra enemy that is simple to defeat, but perilously hard to spot coming: the camera. You will occasionally have to wrangle the camera over to the action, as you almost definitely need to SEE enemy attacks to know how defend yourself.

During the course of renting this game, I came around from being afraid of it to wanting to own it. While it's not my typical cup of tea, Golden Axe is a solid entry into the hack-and-slash action genre, and belongs next to Heavenly Sword, the God of War series, and the Force Unleashed on the shelf.

People Who Will Like This Game: Golden Axe fans, Hordes Miniatures players, Conan: the Barbarian fans, action fans, fans of girl power, fans of dinosaurs, readers of Heavy Metal magazine.

People Who Will Not Like This Game: People who frustrate easily, fans of throwing spells around like they were free, people who hate good graphics, people who do not like Conan: the Barbarian, people who hate beating on gnomes for prizes, people who hate replay value.

For fans of the bloody hack and slash variety. Easy to pick up and play. Button mashing attacks and magical spells and monsters too! There is enough variety and mayhem to keep you busy for some time. Glad the franchise was brought back to life. Looking forward to a Golden Axe 2 in the coming years. Hopefully there will be other old time classic games remade for the PS3. Only negative is the lacking storyline and the fact that there is not much of a strategy involved in the game. It can be a little dull at some points, which is the main flaw. Deserves an average to good rating in my opinion though. You have to be a fan of the genre if you want to play this game.

A nice game for PS3. It's not exactly what I thought it would be considering I cut my teeth on the OLD "Golden Axe" and "Golden Axe 2" from my Sega Genesis days...LOL. I guess the real problem I have with this game is that it plays very similarly to that of Assassin's Creed and Conan the Barbarian in that the storyline is VERY SCRIPTED and your character is only allowed to venture into the ares that the computer game will allow you to at the time. I suppose you could call this game VERY USER FRIENDLY in that if you don't know how to throw your axe or what your target should be, there is a type of help screen that leads you by the nose so that even a base moron can continue on through the scripting.
I suppose the real trick to the game is to be sure and SAVE your progress (I think it autosaves for you or has that option) so that BEFORE you enter an unknown region or a big BOSS fight where you could possibly get your lunch handed to you, you can SAVE it and try the fight and review the best tactics to use to survive the ordeal (or if you die, you can simply restart at the point BEFORE the fight to ensure that you win the next time around)! So if you continue to use this style of gameplay, you will almost always succeed eventually without fear of permanent death. Gets kind of monotonous!
Otherwise, the graphics and battles are pretty decent and give hours of gameplay on those boring afternoons. Good luck!

I played the old golden axe like everyone i loved it i beat it many times so when i heard this game was coming out i knew i had to own it.
Well i got this game for 25 dollars so i didnt invest much but at that price i was disappointed.
The graphics in the game r superior but then again what ps3 games dont?
The fun factor is not there, the smooth gameplay wasnt either there was many odd things that were nothing like golden axe i remember.
I even miss some simple things like choosing ur character which isnt a option in this game neither r are the various monsters and levels they dont exist either.
If u want to play a cheap game for a day or two and not again this is for u, but u wont be playing this months after u buy it for sure.

Reading reviews about this game people try to make it more than what it is. Yes, this is off of an old franchise but the game is still fun with what it gives you.

The fighting mechanics by itself are amazing. For example, you can mid attack which means if you attack and someone is about to attack you from the the side you can "cancel" your attack move and block. Amazing.

The graphics, music, in-game movies are intact. Also you can ride beast like in the old Golden Axe. I never felt so good riding a beast ever since Link riding the horse in Orcarina of Time. Enemies can knock you off and ride the beast themselves which could get very challenging if the A.I. knows what it's doing.

I read this one review where a person said that this is not an adventure game because you play the game in sections meaning that when you defeat all the enemies you can go to the next section. The game still has a story line and trust me when the difficulty is on "hard" you will get your monies worth.

I like this game so much I downloaded Golden Axe: Beast Rider wallpaper to put on my laptop desktop. Yes, it's that serious. No game out now is worth $60 but if you can bid/buy this game for less than $13 it's worth every penny.