Golden Axe was one of those classic quarter munching video games. With animals to ride, gnomes who dropped bottles, and enemies who turned to stone when killed, I spent many an hour and dollar doing my best to beat the game. Now Sega is restarting the property by introducing Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
Unlike the first game, which gave you the choice of three different warriors, the new Golden Axe focuses on the Valkyrie and her fire magic. As you fight your way through the 8-10 hours of game play, you will find many classic and new enemies, plus up to five different mounts to ride.
While the enemies still turn to stone when you kill them you can now do more than just swing your sword at them. Now you can dismember them and use various instant death moves on them. The game will keep track of how many dismemberments you get, so I wouldn't be surprised to see an achievement based off of them.
There will be the infamous gnomes as well this time. There will be four of them - one for magic, one for health, a third beneficial one (whom I really cannot remember) and one that is a "kamikaze" gnome - so watch out for that one.
There's no word on additional downloadable content or the such, though I was told there would be no multiplayer action unfortunately. However, for those of you who'd like to play two player, the original Golden Axe will be out on Xbox Live Arcade as well.
I'm a 29 year old senior network and systems engineer for a consulting firm in the DC area. I'm mostly into MMOs and FPSes (on the console), and I'm a big pro football fan. In my other spare time I like to write and tend to read copious amounts of history and military sci-fi. I'm also into cooking and bad action movies.
Golden Axe has been and should always be a multi-player game. I am already dissapointed in this game and it's not even out yet. How stupid could these game makers be? This game would have so much more potential and sell way more if they had made it multi-player.