Altered Beast Mega Drive Review

Game: Altered Beast
Version: SEGA Mega Drive: Ultimate Collection Xbox 360
Year: 1988

The next game I will be looking at is probably one of the most over-rated titles of all time. Known by many but for some reason still tends to hold a “cult classic” status and that title is Altered Beast. Now I’m sure everyone remembers Altered Beast as pretty decent game but actually going back and playing it leave you quite disappointed. The story starts off quite cool, play begins when you are resurrected by Zeus who has an incredibly scary voice over. Then the story turns a bit more generic as you play a resurrected soldier on a mission to save Zeus’ daughter (WOW!! now that’s original! At least it's not a princess I guess...). The other fundamental problem with this story line is that if Zeus can resurrect people, why does he not resurrect you when you die? I know this would make the game quite easy but it would probably be more fun than being incredibly hard, which it is! 

QUICK get the orb and transform!

The game play starts of pretty slowly, punching and kicking zombies and weird jumping pig things. I find the controls to be a bit sluggish and probably the main reason behind the difficulty level. The game basically revolves around a mad rush to try and collect power ups so you can transform into the “altered beast”. There are a couple stages before you level up to the beast, first your shirt comes off due to some kind of steroid boost and you have a fire ball coming out of your fist and foot, next power up you get slightly more muscular and finally when you get the third power up you transform into a werewolf (at least I think it’s a werewolf). The werewolf is pretty cool as you can fire green balls across the screen and you can also fly left and right causing damage to the enemies, this makes gameplay much easier. The whole transformation process is pretty cool and it’s a concept I really like, the cut scene is also pretty impressive. For me this is probably the only memory that I still enjoy about the game and probably the only thing anyone remembers or cares about. The only thing that vaguely interests me is finding out what beast I will change into on each level, also some of the bosses are pretty decent to look at too. 

Transformation cutscene is pretty epic!

At the end of every level there is a boss fight, these are quite tricky but far easier if you have already transformed. Even if you die you still remain a beast when you return to the game as long as you have enough lives or otherwise it’s game over. The first boss is a weird troll ogre thing that throws its head at you, fortunately he has the power of unlimited spawning heads and won’t stop throwing his head at you until you die or you kill him! Once you finish the level your powers are removed by some freaky zombie/vampire/bald man and you revert back to human for the beginning of the next level.  This bald man is the evil villain or something, at the end of every level he transforms into the boss and when you kill him he moves on to the next stage to wait for you again. 

The sound effect for this move makes your ears bleed!

 The second level is a little bit more varied than the first with snake dragon things coming from the top and bottom of the screen. You can do this weird upwards kick thing to take them down but game play is still pretty much the same, slow and painful. Enemy attacks are quite hard to avoid sometimes and the ability to block would’ve been a welcome addition to the players’ arsenal and is something that is found in similar titles. Again the only interesting thing about this level is finding out what you will turn into once you collect the orbs. If you’re still reading I ruin this experience for you by telling you that you turn into a dragon. Not any dragon though a dragon who can fire balls of electricity and has a shield of electricity. Another little piece of nostalgia from this level is one of the enemies called the “Chicken Stinger” also plays a role in the popular title Golden Axe, you can see the Chicken Stinger in the screen shots above and below!

Chicken Stinger and a bear taking a dump!

I did manage to get to level 3 and to cut a short story shorter you turn into a bear that can roll into a ball and also breathe blue fire (when he does this he looks like he’s about to take a dump or dry hump something). Gameplay is again boring. I didn’t get to the boss level as I died a little inside realising I could be playing a decent pre 1995 game.

Gameplay - 3/10 Poor controls, poor level and enemy design and super repetitive.

Graphics - 5/10 Pretty cool when altering but otherwise pretty bad.  

Sound - 4/10 Average, but very bad in places especially level 2 when using the electricity shield!   

Overall - 4/10 A game I remember being quite cool has taken a beating by time. But for all its downfalls I would recommend playing just to see all the transformations.