By Jason Nimer
If you read my
Gunstar Heroes review a few days ago, you can pretty much predict most of
what Ill say about the iOS port of the Genesis classic Golden Axe. This fondly
remembered side-scrolling beat em up was one of the most popular and
system-defining games of the 16-bit era, and has been ported, remade and
re-released dozens of times. Most of us realized long ago that Golden Axe hasnt
aged well, but can the iOS port breathe some new life into the game?
Well, no. Actually, this is among the worst ports Ive seen in quite some
time. It all boils down to the controls, or lack thereof. Like most of the Sega
games ported to iOS, Golden Axe has not been optimized for touch screen play.
Instead, Sega plopped the three buttons and a d-pad onto the screen, made them
transparent so they dont block the action and tried to shoehorn a game clearly
meant for a controller into Apples touch-based systems. It doesnt work at all.
Another thing to consider with Golden Axe is how poorly the game has aged.
The characters are clunky and slow, the enemies are beyond stupid and the game
is just plain boring by todays standards. At least the port of Gunstar Heroes
could be salvaged by the timeless games positive points, but Golden Axe is a
sad dinosaur of a game with awful controls and nothing holding it up but
nostalgia.
I cant recommend Golden Axe to anyone. Even at the low price of 99 cents,
the game just isnt good enough to warrant spending any time on. And even if
Golden Axe is your favorite game of all time, there are much better ports to be
found on any number of systems and handhelds. Skip this one.
Final Rating: 20%
