The fact that there's no co-op play of any kind is a disappointment, but if things go as planned with this initial offering the development team already has preliminary plans to add the feature to the next installment. With massive multi-stage boss fights and a clear understanding of how to pay effective homage to the original game – aside from the music and turkeys you'll also see both of the main Golden Axe characters make appearances as NPCs (non-playable characters) – Beast Rider looks like it could very well offer the exciting gameplay needed to revitalize the classic series. You'll battle through six separate arenas and will be given bonuses such as health at the beginning of pre-determined stages. Essentially players can hop into the arena and try to fight their way through 60 stages – restarting resets your progress – in order to earn loot that can be transferred over to the main story mode. The final part of our demo was a description of another one of Golden Axe's game modes, called Battle Arena. Other than that small stealth ability, the magic in Beast Rider was left under lock and key. Obviously this will allow for Tyris to sneak up on unwitting guards and get the drop on an otherwise ugly situation. Our demo just showed Tyris turning completely invisible, but the final version will feature a nice Predator-esque effect. The first magical ability is that of stealth. The third aspect of Beast Rider is its magic combat, though what we were shown was fairly limited and obviously early in development. These portals to other portions of the game world house massive spikes on either side where you can quite literally skewer enemies. As another means of shipping your foes off to the art life, Golden Axe features things known as sacrifice gates. There are also certain objects that can only be destroyed by the Axe. You'll need to summon the axe and lop off their heads to be rid of them. The Golden Axe is mainly used as the only means of killing demons in Beast Rider. Melee combat does, of course, incorporate the Golden Axe itself, as well as other weaponry. You'll also hear the original theme song make its way into portions of the action. As you take down throngs of enemies they'll toss out loot that you can use to buy costumes (six scantily clad and impractical suits in all) and they'll also drop turkey legs as homage to the original arcade version. Some attacks are too strong to parried, thus forcing you to sharpen your reflexes and doge the incoming attack. The developers at Secret Level have installed a rhythm-based parry and evade system so as to avoid button mashers succeeding too often in the game. The melee combat in Golden Axe will remind some of Viking, just from the aesthetics of how the character's move and attack. It's light weight and fast-moving and appeared to be a bit more docile than the other monsters in Beast Rider. The last beast we were shown was called Abrax and is a fire breathing, ostrich lookalike, only its reptilian. However, since her massive sword is digging into the creature's spine the poor thing is constantly losing blood so she'll need to continually feed it opposing soldiers or it will buck her off and find its own form of sustenance. Using that as a control stick of sorts, Tyrin can command the huge reptile around the battlefield. To pilot this monstrosity with any kind of proficiency Tyrin must hop onto its back and drive her sword into the beast's spine. The next is called Raptor, and though it wasn't available for us to see, we were told that despite its name, it's actually the size of a T-Rex. It can also enrage itself which casts out flames from its body and hands. It's one of a few bruisers in the pack of beasts. It can pick up enemies, rip them limb from limb and toss them back onto the battlefield. This bad ass is all about strength and size. As you'd expect, each creature has its own specialties. Given the game's name, the real draw for players is going to be Tyris' ability to hop on one of five beasts at a time and command them around the battlefield. While the game's magical abilities were only briefly shown, the melee and beat abilities were demoed in full. The first that we were told by one of the game's producers is that the gameplay is centered on three basic facets: beast combat, melee combat and magic combat. Thankfully after sitting through a fairly lengthy gameplay demo we can say with confidence that Beast Rider expands quite a bit on the stale melee-driven combat of Viking. At least when talking about the look of the action. SEGA chose Tyris Flare from the trio as the sexy starlet for Beast Rider, a game that totally departs from the co-op nature of Golden Axe and instead offers a solo experience that struck us at first as a spiritual successor to Viking: Battle for Asgard.
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