It’s been the “next-gen” of gaming systems for some time now–we’ve had the Xbox 360 out on the market for better than three years now, and the Wii and Playstation 3 have been out for a good number of years too.  The Wii is still hard to find in some places, even–though word on Sony’s bounty of cash for available PS3s has not been seen to surface.  So where, I’m forced to wonder, are the truly next-gen games?  Games like Halo Wars and Bioshock and, once again, Fallout 3.

They’re sure not coming from Sega, I’ll tell you that much.

I got my hands on a copy of Golden Axe: Beast Rider today, and it really makes me sad that the great next-gen revolution has crapped out to THIS.

You take control of early video game hottie Tyris Flare, who’s just come in from fighting a handful of Death Adder’s minions to arrive just in time for the Axirian Priestesses’ ritual summoning of the Dragon Titan.  For reasons that aren’t terribly clear, Death Adder (the main bad guy of the whole Golden Axe series) is pants-wettingly terrified of the Dragon Titan, thus he sends out a legion of troops to capture it and bring it much, much closer to him.  This Dragon Titan that he’s so scared of is apparently sufficiently powerful to terrify him, but either not powerful enough or not smart enough to break a length of iron chain attached to him by a harpoon.  Apparently he’s ALSO forgot that he can breathe, at will, this stuff that’s called FIRE, which in sufficient quantities will turn iron chain into a viscous liquid.  I guess the Dragon Titan missed that session of Physics 101 that described the melting point of iron.

But if he’d have done that, then we couldn’t send Amazon hottie Tyrus Flare off into a rampage of blood across several lands in an attempt to finally jam something pointy and metallic into Death Adder once and for all until the next installment.

To this end, Tyrus will have various magic spells and control of several different beasts (hence the title) and will have to kill a whole bunch of enemies that look vaguely similar.  Apparently Death Adder has mastered cloning technology.

I’m making a lot of fun of Golden Axe: Beast Rider, and for good reason–it’s got it coming, frankly.  This is the kind of game we were playing back on our Super Nintendos, for crying out loud.  Having just played the original three Golden Axe installments thanks to one of Sega’s massive collection games, I’ve discovered that Golden Axe: Beast Rider is just a gigantic pile of more of the same, only prettied up and rendered in ever-popular 3-D instead of put on a flat screen. It’s dull, it’s repetitive, and frankly, if it weren’t for the pretty graphics it would be a total waste of time that I’d expect to have been released for PS2 or earlier.

Yes, it’s an action game–and as an action game it’s fair; there’s more than enough things that need killing, but after a while, your sword arm gets tired.  Not to mention your button thumb.  Golden Axe: Beast Rider is a long, drawn-out and monotonous experience that leaves me cold.