Golden Axed

Golden Axed is, as the full title alludes to, a canceled prototype of Golden Axe III. GAIII is a modern looking sequel to a franchise that hasn't been heard of since the Sega Genesis. It was another free SEGA birthday gift that was small enough to make me want to download it. When you boot up the game, it warns that this is a proof of concept, and, oh boy, was it a concept, alright.

For starters, for a proof of concept, there's a lot of graphical settings. I went with fastest because my computer is a million years old, but you can go with the best settings or one of three others. Even on fastest, the graphics are impressive. Worlds above the Genesis era and in line with something on the PSP. I get Castvania X vibes, personally. You can also change controls, but I kept everything default.

You start the game and get no story; it's right into the fire. We're on a castle rampart, and there's a war going on. Things are flying in the background, but we have to deal with various soldiers right now. It plays a lot like other games in the series. We have to travel westward on a 3Desq map. Unlike older games, we get two attacks. Our male sword user (only character) has a fast attack with X and a strong attack with B. You can hold the strong attack and unleash a OHKO if you keep it pressed for long enough. It's pretty neat and adds a fun new dynamic. You can also jump and attack midair, which is always fun! We fight a horde of enemies and avoid a hole to enter a room. Inside, we see someone sitting on a throne before a golden circle that looks to be made of glass. I keep expecting it to break, falling us into part two of the would-be game. But before that, we need to exit this fight pit. We end up getting surrounded by half of this invading army. When our body count rises to its maximum level,... the game ends.

As it said, this is a proof of concept. It's merely a way to show off what could have been. There's no magic or sprint attacks, but the basis of this iconic side scroller is here. I enjoyed the ten minutes that we got. It actually inspired me to boot up Golden Axe I and II on Steam. All three games are very similar and in all the same ways. The only difference is the Axed doesn't have the stuff I mentioned earlier, and I really wish the older games had that strong attack. Also, why are the controls different? I kept accidentally using magic when I wanted to jump. All three games have multiplayer, but I didn't partake. A few friends would make this series a whole lot of fun.

There was some controversy when Golden Axed was released. I didn't read into it, but a lot of old developers suffered through various levels of abuse, and this released some bad memories. I won't go into detail, and I don't know how much that would sway me from buying the actual third game. I'm not really a beat 'em up guy to start with, but in these days of Blizzard and Ubisoft, I think this is worth bringing up. Either way, I hope everything good happens. I don't really know what that means, but I don't have a say in anything anyway.