Rise from your gay (Sega Altered Beast (Amiga))

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Sega Altered Beast (Amiga)
Date:	07/08/09 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some will have fond memories

Disadvantages: Its just a bit cack in lots of ways

Having just recently got the Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on the Xbox 360 I though I'd play some games I never got the chance to, as well as those with fond memories. For every Columns there is a Streets of Rage, for every Alien storm there is a Sonic the Hedgehog, for every Gain Ground there is a Golden axe and one of the best collections of games I've seen in a long time. Though whilst playing Streets Of Rage and the Golden Axe series I read on line that Altered Beast was the one that set up Golden Axe, almost a prequel by the same people. As a huge fan of the side scrolling beat 'em up, I'd some how missed out on this one as a small child, but now I had the chance to play it, some how I wish I hadn't.

You play a weird character with looks of which the standard of Streets of Rage (which came a few years later) made look almost historically old. The game's story is based around this sprite being a Centurion back from the dead as the character has been told to "Rise from your Gay" (due to the limitations in sound back in the late 1980's the attempt to say "grave" was warbled into sounding like "gay" much to humorous childishness. Who has to save Zues' daughters... which begs the question, why are the Greek gods so bloody lazy? Get off your shiny white cloud mate and do your own bloody work, it's your daughter and your sending this thing to save her? He'll probably eat or something.

The levels are flat 2D (unlike the Golden Axe/Streets of Rage/Alien Storm games which are 2.5-D sort of thing) with the players character scrolling from left to right across the levels punching and kicking his foes along the way. All sounds rather good, but the game play feels clumsy, the graphics are rather poor (probably advanced for the late 80's but by 92/93 they looked seriously dated) and the sounds were simple (if funny at the aforementioned "rise from..." moment).
The game did have one or two nice features though, through the levels there were orbs which when collected allowed the player to power up and become things like a wolf, which had super powers a nice addition that presumably was the fore-bearer of the Super Sonic idea (collect the Chaos Emeralds...collect 50 rings...) though sadly the game was too difficulty and slow to want to find out what the latter ones were.

The controls we're simple, one button to jump, one to punch, one to kick, with the D-pad used to move, crouch and modify upwards attacks, though it was incredibly limited, and did date terrible by the time the second Streets of Rage game came out with a much more advanced control system.

Sadly however this is me in 2009 looking back at a game that's almost as old as myself, for those at the time, this was the top of gaming, and for that reason it's often fondly remembered by those in their late 20's. Those who went from it to the Golden Axe games in one fell swoop (the game is often referred to as the Golden axe prototype) before going onto the much better Streets of Rage series. Sadly however when remembering it's age, it's the same age as Alien Storm which provides more laughs and slightly better gameplay. This is annoyingly one of the least playable games on the disk, that some will love just because of rose tinted childhood spectacles, but personally I'll stay away.

Notes: 1 Player only

Summary: Thank god gaming is an altered beast since