"Are you TUFF Eno....oops, wrong game..."Wise from your grave""

Wise from your grave, reviewer

“Damn it, what’s the job today? Let me check the calendar. Need to save the daughter of Zeus. Because Zeus is to lazy to use his own warriors to get her back. So he uses me, I’m dead and was sleeping. Does he not show consideration to anyone anymore? If he’s the god of thunder, couldn’t he simply strut his ass over there and lay the smack down in like a matter of minutes?”

Did that sound stupid?

It was.

And, that happens to be basically the whole story line of Altered Beast summed up in one paragraph; minus the part about the calendar. It all begins when one of Zeus’s messenger says: “Rise from your grave” or more appropriately “Wise from your Vrave“. You then jump out of the grave. Mind you this dead guy looks like Hulk Hogan with a minimal clothing and no shaggy man-boobs. He’s been taught good posture as well when he was young. He walks like a board across the screen. He doesn’t have a name; so lets give him one. Meet Fred.

Fred doesn’t do much since he’s dead, common sense should tell you this. Fred hasn’t been taught how to defend himself very well, either. He only knows how to punch and kick. Managing to jump in the air sometimes, too. The pressing of a few buttons will make Fred fight back. You really don’t have much in the way of cool stuff you can do with Fred. You can either kick them in the shins or knock their head off, literally. It might take a few hits to knock off the oppositions heads because you’re weak when you get out of the grave. This is were the stand-out point comes in.

If you manage to kill gray wolves, they’ll leave you some power ups. After one of these power-ups, he’ll scream:

POWER UP!

His shirt rips open; displaying the manliness. Women swoon at the thought of this man with his big, muscular chest sticking out ever so vigorously. His body grows so big…..but…Fred’s head stays the same size. Too demonstrate this point further: Picture the Hercules statue in a museum. Knock off his head with a hammer. Put a lemon on top of his head. Make sure to use brown play-doe as hair, and to use any color of maker to create a smiley face. Adding other details as you see fit, or course. Please keep in mind he still doesn’t have shaggy Hulk Hogan man boobs yet. This is what he looks like when he’s “powered” up.

One more of these items will do something drastic: *Suspenseful Pause* Change into a werewolf.

Freds now a werewolf that can take out *most* monsters in one hit. Fred can fly across the screen with a block of power in front of you, clearing house. Shooting out fists that can smear most everything. Then fred runs into the boss of the first level. At first he looks like a dead guy that’s doing the pledge of allegiance. He’ll change into something that resembles Alfred Hitchcock with giant devil horns. He’ll take his head off and throw it at you. After Fred beats up on him; he’ll start to shake. Is he having a seizure? Does out hero need to call 911 in the middle of Greece ? No, he’s just dying.

Level 2 starts up. Same thing, you rise from the dead and go to fight the boss of this level too. Keeping in mind that you have to be a “monster” to fight the boss. You can’t fight them in your humanoid form. The boss of this stage quickly goes down in a matter of seconds; so does the rest of the game. They’re not all “Alfred Hitchcocks”. Some take the form of a plant to a moldy snail. Altered beast is an extremely short and pointless game to say the least. Once you beat it, it’s nothing to brag about. You go from level to level doing the same thing with the same sound effects.

Speaking of which are all really bland. Whenever Fred speaks, the music has to stop. IF you’re listening to the tunes that the game has, you’ll be interrupted by “POWER UP!” or, when he dies “AHHH!!!”. Another complaint that can be thrown is that the music is just to standard. It doesn’t’ try to pump you up, doesn’t try to set the mood. It basically is just there for the novelty, nothing more. I encouraged Fred to carry a walkman around with him while in this game. He didn’t listen, now look at him. He’s attempting to end his own life………for a second time.

You might be able to make out what he looks like when he does manages to end himself. By jumping down one of the bottomless pits, too running into the same enemy more than 40 times in a row. For the time, Altered Beast had pretty normal graphics. It wasn’t anything fancy, the grass looks like grass. The sky looks like a sky. The final form of being a human looks like a man in a thong, like it should. Most everything can be made out. You don’t have extreme detail. This is apparent on stuff like rocks. You can’t see any real cracks or anything. They sort of just set there looking gray. That is unless you put some of the brown play-doe and color on it with a marker. It’s up to you.

Make sure you mark on the arcade, though. Arcade controls have always been hard for me to use. I guess I’m not coordinated or something like that. They’ll probably work well with you, the joystick and stuff just isn’t me. You got the buttons for Jump, Kick, Punch, etc. These are all controlled on one side of the machine. Movement is controlled on the other side. Just like about 9% of arcade games.

Final Verdict

Graphics = 5
Gameplay = 3
Control= 5
Sound = 1

Final = 3

You probably won’t ever see this game at the arcade anymore. Anyway, I’m out like a corpse in the night.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/08/03, Updated 07/29/03