Golden Axe: Beast Rider (E3 2008)

From Joystiq (whose community seems to exist entirely of 12 year olds):

"Rightly or wrongly, we don't have co-op multiplayer in the game," he [Sean Ratcliffe, Sega's VP of marketing] offered, a statement that was met with a short, yet uncomfortable pause. "I think as much as anything it's taking inspiration from the original series but in terms of that multiplayer co-op the developer decided that they didn't want to take the game in that direction."

When it comes to re-envisioning classics, you just can't get it right no matter what you do. Fans just don't seem to understand that sometimes, developers have a different vision of a game, and sometimes they believe in it enough to risk the ire of all the bitchy "old-school" fans that will give you a failing grade no matter what you do. Yes, the co-op was one of the reasons Golden Axe was great, but so was beast riding - and this time it's the focus. Watch the gameplay footage, and I think you can get an idea of how difficult it would have been to accomplish some of this gameplay with co-op.

E3 2008 Gameplay Footage

In particular, I'm referring to the cinematic fatalities and pace of action (particularly when the beasts are involved). Sure, you can accomplish this with splitscreen, and Gears managed to detail fatalities just fine, but that was without any massive scaling worries like "how do we manage to show the action when you're riding something the size of a T-rex?" I think I can see why the developers opted to go with a single-player campaign. The only thing I'm really unhappy about right now is the way they've handled object transparency for when the player is blocked from view by the camera.

I want to believe that they're all old-school Golden Axe fans like we are, that it was a tough and difficult decision but that we'll have a better game for it. In the end, I think I don't particularly care, so long as it retains worthwhile elements of the classics but shines on its own as a new title. Me, I'm pretty stoked - looking past my incredible hardon for the Tyris redesign, it looks like a pretty solid M-rated fantasy-action title, a genre I've felt sorely lacking since the original God of War.