Altered Beast

Sega have flooded the Xbox Live Arcade this week, with six titles seeping past the sand-bags and forcing people to seek shelter on the roof. So, is Altered Beast worth getting your feet wet for, or should you stay up top and seek help?

The first thing I should say is that this is an ugly game. It’s awful to look at – there’s no two ways about it. It’s not a pretty sight. It’s not aged well, at all. Looking at it now, you can’t even imagine that it looked good when it was first conceived some twenty years ago – but hey, they were simpler times back then – I remember being impressed by the Vidiprinter spewing out the football results on Grandstand, so I would imagine that Altered Beast’s visuals would have blown off my schoolboy socks.

Altered Beast is a side-strolling (that’s not a typo by the way, it really is that fast) beat-em up where you’re raised from the dead to do Zeus’ bidding as he asks you to rescue Athena from the Underworld. As you stroll across the screen, you are faced with identikit enemies who are floored with one blow of your poorly animated arms. Make mincement of a blue bull-type creature however and you increase in strength. A few more bulls and you’ll alter to become a beast. Do you see how clever this is?

The levels are quite short, and end with a ridiculous boss battle where a man turns into a large beastie thing and throws heads at you. As boss battles go you won’t be too challenged by these as the heads are on a somewhat set path, and quite easy to dodge or deal with. Defeat the boss, and then you’re onto the next level which is pretty much the same as the last but with a different background, and a different beastlypower.

One of the baffling elements of this release, though, is the fact that it’s already out there on Xbox 360 anyway – it’s already one of the titles on the Sega Mega Drive: Ultimate Collection, so why part with your hard-earned MS points when you could buy a forty-game complilation disc for a few pounds more than the price of this and it’s release day siblings.