I always think you have to be very, VERY careful when doing a sequel for a much loved game, or updating and ancient classic. You see, as a non-Sonic fan, the criminally underrated Golden Axe for me, was the reason to own a Sega Master System or Genesis (MegaDrive) – it was one of the first games to have a truly playable co-op mode and you could play as a warrior called Ax, or a dwarf called Gilius or the lovely magic-wielding warrior-ess Tyris. And so anything less than a lovingly-crafted game that looks really amazing, has huge mythical beasties, gory deaths and a sword-wielding warrior princess called Tyris with fabulous lovelies in it is going to get very short shrift and a damning verdict from me, okay?

Golden Axe: Beast Rider doesn’t open its case for leniency very convincingly. The very least Secret Level could have done was give us a state of the art game engine with some sumptuous visuals and tight hack ‘n slash gameplay, and it should have a co-op mode like the original games. Sean Ratcliffe, VP of Marketing at Sega has been quoted as saying "Rightly or wrongly, we don't have co-op multiplayer in the game. 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. If Golden Axe: Beast Rider is successful, we can then come back with something else that maybe will have the co-op mode that everyone is wishing this game has." And it also only has one playable character too Sean. Oh dear.

So there’s no co-op, and without denigrating the game one iota, what we got is a last-generation graphics engine, that just about manages to display in a resolution to justify its PS3 logo. You still might feel the need to check to see if your PS3 is doing its PS2-emulating thing, it’s that old looking. In actual fact, a few of the PS2’s better looking games put Beast Rider to complete shame; God of War (twice), Prince of Persia, Shadow of the Colossus – I could name a few more games that do heroic combat and make it look (and feel) suitably epic. Beast Rider may try, but fails miserably to do either.

Other than the soon-gets-dull combat the rest of the gameplay consists of you jumping aboard an occasional beast and attacking the hapless enemy with them, or sometimes the enemy will have even nastier beasts than you. Fortunately jumping from your beast you can soon dismount them with a ‘jump and a slash’ attack, and then perform a GTA-esque hijack – it’s one of the beast-riding part’s few pleasing moments, as whenever you're atop a beast you feel like you're trying to (to use a GTA metaphor again) roadkill someone using a truck with flat tyres and a wobbly wheel. Aaargh.

Exploration of the levels is also next to pointless as they’re so totally linear (linear may be too expansive a word to describe them – ‘A2B’ might be more apt). Often an area will be blocked off with an invisible wall and each area gets gated off as you progress, meaning you can’t backtrack to pick up powerups you might have saved. There’s no climbing but a few sections where you have to time jumps carefully or run past pointy objects intent on penetrating or blowing Tyris off a cliff do little to make the game feel any more satisfying, or break up the increasingly tedious gameplay. Even the fabled Golden Axe is a letdown, as for the most part (despite being a huge, FLAMING axe) all it can be used for is to throw it at out-of-reach switches; you can’t even pop distant enemies off with it. It’s daft. There are also several sections where there are containers that can only be opened by a beast’s attack, but you won’t have a beast available, and couldn’t possibly have got there with one! It is, again, daft. Dragon statues can be found as you progress and these act as ‘continues’, and you’ll probably be needing all of them if you want to see the end. Just when you thought the game couldn’t get any more annoying these midget-gnome-dwarf things appear, running around and sniggering at you – this is your power up bonus section. Hit the little bastards and they drop a small health or mana boost. Aaaaargh!

If it’s available at a budget price Beast Rider might (and I said ‘might’) appeal to the sort of masochist who thinks Ninja Gaiden is fun, but it’s nowhere near as good looking or satisfying, and the tiresome, flawed combat soon gets old. Not even the mandatory gore is particularly well done, with the same old animations used over and over and OVER again. The game’s sloppy presentation, it freezes in-game (presumably loading) and doesn’t install on the HDD (although the lack of an option to install could simply be my PS3 exhibiting sentient good taste). Other tatty bits like the clouds on the main option screen that scroll by jerkily, or the loading screen that looks squished and doesn’t display in the correct aspect ratio combine with poor collision detection, laughable clipping (the main character and other objects pass through things they shouldn’t - EVERYWHERE) to put the rotten cherry on rather crappy cake. I can only recommend you avoid Beast Rider, there are far too many good games around at the moment, and around the corner, to be wasting your hard-earned money on this lacklustre update of a much-loved classic.