Altered Beast

"A bad game that I admittedly have a certain level of affection for"

By affection I mean it has a certain nostalgia value to it. Altered Beast (AB) is a mediocre game at best with many glaring game play flaws which I'll elaborate on shortly. But it is a good example of Sega's initial marketing technique for the Genesis, promoting it as a superior format for home conversions of arcade games than what had been seen on earlier consoles.

Game Play
AB is a side scroller in which you play as some overly muscular warrior type character. The screen moves along automatically forcing you to walk at a steady pace while killing the various monsters that appear by punching or kicking them. The objective in each level is to obtain 3 power orbs which appear when you defeat a blue two head goat monster. I'm not sure what kind of sense that makes, but anyways once you collect 3 orbs your character transforms into a humanoid beast such as a werewolf, dragon, tiger, etc. Each level has a different transformation providing you with special attacks unique to that creature. Levels are completed by defeating a boss monster which will only appear once you've transformed, so the quicker you obtain the orbs the better your chances for survival.

I happen to like the general concept of AB, being able to change into different creatures with unique attacks throughout the game. The problem is that its ideas are applied in such a sloppy haphazard way that most of their potential is wasted.

One of the most annoying aspects of this game is how little time you actually get to use the various beasts. As I mentioned earlier you must defeat 3 blue goat things and collect the power orbs they leave behind in order to transform and be able to fight the level's boss. The thing is, if you manage to grab each orb as soon as they become available the boss will appear almost immediately afterwards. So unless you accidentally miss an orb or intentionally play badly you'll barely get to use the beasts at all outside of boss fights. And once you beat a level you lose all of your hard earned power ups. You'll spend the vast majority of the game playing as a normal human, a very weak and frustratingly sluggish human at that.

Oh, and lets not forget the cheapness either. Unlike most action games which generally give you a few seconds grace period to recover after taking damage this one just lets the enemies continue to knock you around mercilessly. More realistic perhaps, but extremely frustrating and unfair when you've been careful to conserve your life early on only to see it demolished in seconds by cheap juggles. This problem is just compounded by your human character's virtually non-existent attack range. You can punch and kick but kicking is the only real option if you want to actually hit anything. You can also attack while jumping or kick upward while crouching but the attacks come out so slowly and are so limited in their reach that they're usually worthless as well. The first 2 power orbs you collect will increase your human character's attack range and strength respectively. But the upgrades are so minimal that they provide no real strategic advantage when fighting the string of lame predictable enemies. What the game basically boils down to is moving forward on the directional pad and pressing the kick button about 90% of the time.

But while your character trudges around at a snails pace most enemies come zipping across the screen or fall from the sky at such random and chaotic intervals that you'll have no chance of avoiding them until you memorize their attack patterns. The funny thing though is that while the game is quite hard the first few times you play a level it quickly becomes easy to the point of boredom thereafter. Enemy AI is almost non-existent as the vast majority move along pre-assigned paths and will make no attempt to hit you unless you are in their way. Once you've played a level a couple of times you'll have every enemy location and attack pattern memorized. Figure this out and you should be able to breeze through most of the game with little to no effort. Even bosses pose no real threat once you figure out how to avoid their incredibly lame and limited attack options. The second stage's boss in particular is so laughably easy once you figure out his weakness that you can beat him in about 5 seconds every time afterwards, what a joke.

Perhaps realizing how predictable and short the game is (about 20 minutes on a good run) the developers attempted to add challenge by only giving you three lives. Each life actually consists of 3 hits and should you lose all 3 you simply restart in the same spot you died at. So the way I think of it you actually have 9 lives. The problem with this is that there is no way of gaining additional lives or refilling your life bar. Those 9 hits are all you're going to get for the entire game, which means that until trial and error tells you where enemies and various obstacles will appear you're going to die constantly and have to restart the game all over from the beginning. The whole experience degenerates into a cycle of mindless repetition playing through the same slow stupid levels over and over again until you get back to where you died only to die again a few paces later and be forced to go back and do it all again.

Graphics
As the system's pack in at launch this literally was the very first Genesis game, and it sure looks like it. But while the visuals certainly haven't aged well they were quite good for the time, especially when weighed against its main competitor the NES. Levels sport a nice variety of colours and the various stage themes (surface, underground, quarry, etc) create a good contrast. The backgrounds also show a surprising level of detail with marble statues, pillars, plants, and buildings. Enemy designs are also quite good, again playing on a Greek mythology type motif. You've got an interesting assortment of zombies, lizard/bird creatures, dragons, two headed beasts, and giants to name a few. Besides benefiting from a larger colour pallet character sprites are also much larger and more detailed than what the 8-bit systems could muster. While they may not amount to a whole lot today Altered Beast's graphics were a good showpiece of what the Genesis hardware could pull off and I'll give the game props for that.

Sound
This is the other area of the game that I actually kind of like. AB has a number of voice clips which are memorable for their unintended cheesiness. I'm sure most people are familiar with this game's super grainy opening audio clip where you are told to “wise from you gwave”. Also great is the evil wizard guy laughing and saying “welcome to your doom” on queue before each boss fight. The voice saying “power up” whenever you grab an orb and your guy becomes progressively more muscle bound never fails to crack me up either.

To be honest the music isn't half bad either. Most of it has a deep forbidding kind of rhythm with a heavy drum beat. It feels appropriate and never gets annoying despite the countless times I've played through most levels.

Replay Ability
Pretty much none once you beat it. You'll have seen and experienced everything and lost all patience with it no doubt. If you do manage to hang in there the game simply loops around endlessly only this time with stronger and more numerous enemies. The game also features 2 player co-op and is definitely more fun when played with a friend.

Story
Big muscular guy must save kidnapped princess from evil wizard. Been there done that moving right along!

To Buy?
Obviously AB was intended to be a tech demo for the Genesis hardware and it succeeds in that, but that's about the extent of its value. The system has so many vastly more enjoyable action games to offer that there's no point in playing this. Recommendable only for nostalgia or curiosity and definitely not worth the 8 bucks that Nintendo wants for it on the Wii's virtual console.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/06/08

Game Release: Altered Beast (US, 08/14/89)