The original Altered Beast was a 2D arcaded, side scrolling beat 'em up title where gamers played the role of a soldier raised from the dead, by Greek-God legend Zeus to rescue his daughter. Despite sounding like a pretty average game, Altered Beast's selling point was in it’s brilliant gameplay. Gamers could transform into various creatures - ranging from a Werewolf, a bear and even a electric-breathing dragon - and pummel all evil foes that stood in their way. Fast-forward to today's day and age and discover a new world where Greek mythology is no longer the 'cool' thing amongst gamers. And in this, comes the newly changed look and feel of Altered Beast, a modern day sci-fi title that withholds enough sciencie junk that would get any science-nerd on the frits.
The new-age Altered Beast title follows the distinctive story of an unnamed male, who has undergone a number of genetic enhancements that allows him to transform into various creatures, who is trying to put together the pieces to his puzzling purpose of being a science groups lab-rat for their mutation projects. The game begins with our main character being heavily bolted into a metal sealed coffin being flown to a new research area via helicopter. Like everything in video games, something goes terribly wrong during the flight, as a mysterious dragon-like creature attacks the helicopter, leaving it to crash into a nearby forest. The only thing to survive from this crash is you. This is where our adventure begins. You're a half-human, half-creature who knows nothing about his past and why he has undergone these horrific changes.
As gamers progress through the game you’ll recover genetic chips that will once again enable you to transform into the beast that you were once able to, which also jolts mysterious information prior to the helicopter events. The transformation aspect of this game is by far the only interesting area of Altered Beast, both in this modern day version as well as the original. Gamers will be able to turn into creatures such as a Werewolf, a Dragon and even a massive snow-beast. Each transformation has each of it’s own pros and cons, each vital in progression throughout the game. For example, the Werewolf is a fast creature that can run at an amazing rate, jump to the highest points and can leave enemies in a bloodly death with a single swipe of the hand. On the other hand though, the snow beast moves slower, yet can lift boulders and kill the much larger enemies with ease. So it's a vital point that gamers play attention to their environment and their transformation’s abilities. Unlike the original, Altered Beast allows gamers to choose their choice of transformation anywhere in the game as they feel fit. This allows a lot more freedom in the style of gameplay and allows each level to be varied enough that gamers won't just use the same transformation over and over again. Unfortunately though, transformation comes at a cost. As gamers are soon told at the beginning of the game, our hero can't stay in creature-form forever, as it will drain his health and kill him. To represent our transformation limit though, is a green energy bar that informs us how much transformation power we have. Even once hitting zero on this bar gamers can remain in creature-form, although your health is drained rather than your transformation energy. Gamers can regain either their health or transformation energy by 'ripping' out the energy from surrounding enemies, or from dead enemies on the ground.
"What big teeth you have grandma"
In addition to this, each creature can gain new abilities throughout the course of the game. As gamers find gene-cells throughout the game they will be able to enhance their creatures abilities by feeding these new genes into them. This gene-feeding unlocks a number of helpful abilities that not only help gamers throughout the game, but also look down-right cool to witness. For example, gamers can feed a gene-cell into the snow-beast to enable an ability that allows gamers to create huge-ice blocks that can be thrown at nearby enemies, which either freezes them or smashes them into an icy death.
Maintaining it's roots, Altered Beast is still at heart a beat 'em up title that require no more than being able to press buttons when nearby enemies approach. Gamers will progress through various environments including a forest, graveyard, and even a deserted shopping mall, each with it’s own unique creatures of sorts. Unfortunately though, Altered Beast still maintains that easy feel to the game's fighting. Enemies aren't difficult and on most occasions your transformations can sit still whilst you simply continuous press a button that activates a long-ranged attack, which kills most enemies on a single hit.
Altered Beast is a very simple game at heart though. A game that requires gamers to travel from point A to point B, whilst killing a few baddies and boss creatures along the way. Nothing interactive, and nothing exciting. This boring old formula is continuously met throughout the entire game and there’s absolutely nothing in between this action that breaks it up.
"Things look quiet, a little too quiet"
While the transformation aspect of the game is vastly improve, although most of the creatures aren’t as cool as the original, the rest of the game runs quite poorly. One of these is the game’s graphics. While Altered Beast withholds some excellent FMVs throughout the game, the game is extremely sluggish and full of graphical flaws. The animation of the characters is awkward, the textures are rough, and the graphics look outdated for what is expected. There’s a lot of awkward swaying from the camera that causes frustration amongst gamers as they try to see what lies ahead of them or behind them. And at no surprise, the game's sound score is below average also. There are no intensive tracks that liven up the game, the sound effects are below par and the voice acting is just lifeless or just uninteresting to listen to.
Altered Beast is one of the few old-school games that would've been best off if it stayed clear of the 2D to 3D transition. While maintaining it's old-school roots, it has failed to recreate the series into something that can withhold the new age gaming of today’s generation. Altered Beast is still a remarkable series, but this latest incarnation would be best left alone by the long-time fans, as we continue to sit here and wait until a true 3D sequel is released. Don’t disappoint us again Sega.
I loved that loony toons games and the micky mouse games! They were the best! 
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