Good old fashioned skimpy clad beat 'em up ! (Golden Axe)

Member Name: nullpoint

Product:	Golden Axe
Date:	21/09/00 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliantly playable , Gorgeous graphics ,great sound , good 2 player fun

Disadvantages: Annoying jumping puzzles

This game brings back some excellent memories of trips shopping to buy new joysticks and was probably responsible for the death quite a few of them !

This is really good old fashioned gameplay that I don't think we'll ever see again . Golden Axe on the Amiga was a conversion of the arcade game of the same name - and for a change the conversion improves on the original ( minus the loading times ) .

The game follows you (and a friend) in the role of one of three warriors travelling through a mystical side scrolling land to defeat the evil that is Death Adder . Death Adder being the kind of guy he is has been torturing the locals and each of the 3 characters has a reason to want to knock him from his evil throne .

Enough of the dodgy storyline - what really counts here is really simple arcade action . Your 3 characters have a limited number of attack moves since you only have 1 fire button . The guys who have designed the game though have extended it a bit so you can jump and attack and also pull off special moves by using a combination of running , jumping and attacking .

But for the most of it you'll just be hacking and slashing at everything . The 3 characters you get to choose from are essentially the same but have slightly different attack moves . Each of the characters has different magical abilities though which can be built up by collecting potions that are littered around the levels . This acts as a smart bomb type attack with some fancy graphics depending on your character and their magic ( fire , earth and wind I think ) .

As you build up the amount of magic you have the attacks become more impressive and do more damage to your enemy .

The background scenery is excellent , as is the music - with some really catchy bleepy tunes that have been faithfully taken directly from the arcade . The graphics have been somewhat souped up from the original and look excellent - there's a couple of
extra things here and there that die hard fans will probably notice .

There's some really nice touches that show how much work has been put into this game - such as the loading sequences between levels .

The game really takes off in 2 player mode as you battle through the levels with a mate . This is made even better by being able to take advantage of dragon like creatures that you can knock your enemies off and ride yourself . There's also a 2 player 1-1 fighting mode but since the number of moves are pretty limited it usually involves running at each other and pressing the fire button quickly .

So all the ingredients are there for a good co-operative game and it's hard to pinpoint what it is about Golden Axe that makes it so playable . The level design is different enough from level to level and there's a large batch of different baddies to battle against including those old faves - the bosses .

This game is an absolute amiga classic . If you haven't played it then download it now , invite a mate around and kick some real bad guy butt .

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