To THQ: Way to butcher a Genesis classic you soulless bastards.
Quite frankly, this game sucks. It sucks really bad. It's no wonder that 3d6 Games never decided to make another title for about 5 years because everyone who knows their stuff would realize, "Hey, these are the guys who made those horrendous games on the GBA!" way to keep it on the down low guys!
It takes the mind numbing repetition of the original title and somehow makes it not fun anymore. Yeah, Altered Beast for the Genesis made beating up hordes of the same guys over and over really fun, probably because the resolution was four times as large and the action got purely chaotic, but punching the same three vomit colored dorks to death over and over with the most simplistic looking muscle-head in the history of man is not chaotic fun. The only time this game was actually enjoyable is when I first changed into a beast, and only then was it the poorly animated "shape shifting" animation that took place, and that was incredibly cheesy as well.
You'd think turning into a poop colored werewolf would make this game cool for at least five seconds, but sadly it doesn't, all the beasts have about the same exact moves, and they're all quite useless, not to mention that those really annoying "one hit, one kill" creatures are still kicking your ass. Oh, can I ask a question? How is it that the massive ancient heavily armored skeleton armed with a huge sword can rest his huge boney crack under a dilapidated little Greek structure and make rocks fall from the sky that couldn't hit the world's fattest elephant, can't seem to kill me once despite the fact that my oh-so-mighty Greek hero was massacred about five seconds ago by a bunch of mosquitoes. How appropriate, how dramatic, next time just start the level and put a big fat game over screen in my face that says "Oops GAME OVER! In the future you were killed by a bunch of idiotic flies".
The graphics are horrid, the enemies all look the same, and they're all vomit colored. With the GBA's amazing 16-bit color, you'd think we could manage more than 5 colors, but no, someone had to just be real damn lazy and make everything the same three shades of brown, then everything else an obnoxious blue or green color that looks like crap.
The sound is this game's only saving grace, most of the old Genesis sound is preserved, and the music is okay for awhile, Zeus sounds totally awesome as he tells you to go indiscriminately kill things (which will soon bring us to the nonsensical story) and monsters scream when you hit them, yes they scream. But then you'll notice that all these sounds have been playing over and over again since the beginning and you realize that's crap too. For those of you that actually care about the story, it's something about Zeus bringing you back from being a stone statue or something and makes you go kick some enemy god's ass. Who cares, you beat stuff up, do you really need a reason? Oh, and why do you turn into big fat monsters for no apparent reason? Nobody knows, the gods are asking themselves the same question but they're too shy to ask Mr. Musclehead because he's too busy being stung to death by mosquitoes. So why should you buy this game? You shouldn't go download it off the Wii's Virtual Console if you really need to. Sure Gamespot says it's mediocre, but whatever, at least it's better than this rubbish.