Here's the original review I wrote of Golden Axe: Beast Rider, which "updates" and reworks the formula that claimed so many quarters in 1989 as the arcade (and later Genesis) game called Golden Axe: If you're hungry to revisit the classic side-scrolling beat-'em-up through the prism of current game design, please forget this stillborn runt and enjoy Castle Crashers instead. Thank you.

Unsurprisingly, that terse estimation of the game's value isn't quite to spec. Allow me to elaborate. Beast Rider is a third-person, 3-D update of Sega's 2-D side-scroller. In the original, two players could choose between three characters before marching to screen right for 45 minutes, smashing more or less everything in sight. The game was fun, if not quite earth-shattering; most of the appeal came from pairing up with a friend (or, more often, a stranger) with whom you'd frantically alternate dropping quarters to buy another few minutes of evil-bashing.

The Krommath is the best of the beasts available early in the game.

Remove the title screen from this version and it would be almost unrecognizable as a Golden Axe update. First off, this is a single-player game, which acts as a prologue to the arcade original. Sega promises that the next game in the series (should one occur) will feature multiplayer, but for now, the primary dynamic that defined the game is gone like Keyser S?ze.

Instead of multiplayer, we get a tiresome, "sexy" heroine; enemies that are as repetitive as the combat required to destroy them; a weak defense and counter system; and bludgeoningly linear level design with checkpoints placed too far apart. If Sega presented this game by announcing that the company had invented a time machine, traveled back six years, and discovered a prototype version of Heavenly Sword built for the PlayStation 2, it might have some appeal. As either a current hack-and-slash title or Golden Axe continuation, it has almost none.

Or, to put it simply: The game just ain't fun.

Stilted one-on-one combat is all too often the meat of the experience.

The entirety of the action is based on a few small attack combos and magic spells. Two-button combos swing a hefty sword, and successful hits can lend extra power to the swing. When enemies attack they'll flash either orange or purple. Orange attacks can be dodged by hitting a left shoulder button; purple attacks are blocked by hitting a right shoulder button. Successful dodging/blocking will also lend extra power to your swing.

This could have been a triumph of tactical combat over arcade button-mashing, but it never works out that way. The system feels stilted and unnatural, and breaks any immersion the game might offer. By asking players to watch for color flashes instead of subtle changes in character stance or movement, combat never becomes enthralling. This is like a Guitar Hero system for melee combat, and it is forgettable.

In conjunction with the dodge and block movements, regular attacks can launch scripted special moves that correspond to particular enemies. That is, dodge a certain enemy's attack, then hit either the light or heavy attack at the right time, and a scripted death animation unspools. When they occur, these are impressive, but pulling them off is difficult to achieve. The timing feels wholly nebulous.

Beast-to-beast battle is never quite as impressive as this shot implies.

Then there are the beasts, which -- in a callback to the original game -- can be mounted by you and your foes. Among them are a sort of miniature dragon and a large, muscular cat; better than either of those are the slow, elephantine Krommath and the ape-like Mirigore. Each animal has a quality in common: Special attacks drain their health meter. That being the case, you'll go through mounts like they have no value at all -- which is, in fact, the case. Special summoning pads dot the landscape; just stand on one of these to replace the beast that was just slaughtered out from beneath you. That devalues the animals. There's no reason to treat beasts like a special resource, with the possible exception that they're the best thing about the game.

What other problems plague Beast Rider? Instant death, for one, most often delivered while on one of the game's many bridges -- though there are also moments when you can be shoved or blown off a cliff. Not all vertical drops and cliffs represent potential falls from life, but some do. Inconsistency is a bitch.

Enemy Berserker Rages also inspire frustration. During some encounters, you'll see a bluish dude stalking around who acts as a sort of totem for other warriors in the encounter. Kill the blue guy first, and the remaining enemies will be consumed with red flame and greatly increase their rate of attack. Get caught against a wall with two or three Berserkers spamming attacks, and you're hamburger. If I'd consciously decided to kill the blue guys each time, things would be different, but they topple to the ground if you sneeze nearby.

Grand, impressive sights like this are few and far between.

Visually, little stands out. The beasts look great, but they're an exception, not the rule. Within each chapter, the visual design changes almost not at all, turning the trek across Beast Rider's lands into an awful slog. (The occasional appearance of great beast bones is memorable.) The PlayStation 3 build looks a bit more sharp and polished than the Xbox 360's, but the difference isn't significant enough to consider one version more valuable than the other.

Occasionally you'll come across a dragon statue, which acts as a continue; five can be carried. Without a statue, death means you'll have to go back to the last checkpoint, which can be 10 gameplay minutes behind where death took you. For many players, the original Golden Axe was barely good for 10 minutes of play. Some would call the new equation "added value." I just call it drudgery.

Individually, a lot of these issues wouldn't be huge problems. But stack one on top of the other and Golden Axe looks terribly tarnished. Secret Level's intent for the game seems to have been to create a beat-'em-up that turns into a more tactical combat game -- hence the emphasis on color-coded evasive moves, and a constant stream of prompts about how to use them in countering and canceling attacks. But that never builds into an entertaining experience. Beast Rider hits a low threshold for entertainment and then stalls out like an overtaxed beast of burden.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game purchased by the reviewer.