E3 2003: Altered Beast Impressions

Sega's Wow Entertainment brings us this milennium's version of Altered Beast on the PS2 - how did it go down at E3? Hmmm. Impressions and screens within.

It's been many years since Sega unleashed the Altered Beasts upon its fans, and those who spent years clamoring for a sequel will finally get their wish. At last year's E3, a black mark was almost placed on the legacy of this classic when fans were mistreated to a totally dysmal outsourced Altered Beast for the Gameboy Advance which almost tarnished the name of the series. This time around Sega looks to take matters into their own hands by doing Altered Beast the way it should be done, in-house.

In Altered Beast you play the role of a special military operative sent in alone and with minimal information to investigate a deadly genetic outbreak in a small West Coast town. While uncovering clues, soon the mission becomes one of survival as you're being hunted by wave after wave of unspeakable terrors in the form of failed genetic experiments. Haunted by your mysterious past, you soon discover that in order to survive you have to look to your darkest power, explore your inner demons and tap into your most primal instincts and find the beast within to unleash your fury.

Altered Beast was shown in rolling video form only and was looking quite dark and tasty. Unfortunately the single plane side scrolling beat em up action of the original has been replaced by a much wider 3D playing field. Personally I would have much preferred a side scroller but with Sega's history of fantastic gameplay wizardry, I'm definitely gonna give this one a try. Also I would have loved for the story to follow that of the original by having Zeus awaken the characters from their graves to complete a mission. With the game's modern day storyline, it doesn't seem as if we'll be hearing a next-gen "Rise from your Grave" at the start of the game.

The video demo showed mostly cinematic cut scenes of a man being chased by many ferocious beasts, then gets cornered by them and goes into a metamorphosis into a beast himself and dishes out a beating of an altered state to the imprudent monsters. There were mostly CG scenes shown with a few gameplay screens sprinkled in between them to demonstrate the different beasts your character can morph into, those scenes, although dark, looked pretty promising. The four beast characters shown were of a cool looking flying dragon emitting electrical charges like in the original, along with a mutant looking wolf beast slashing away at the gruesome looking enemes.

The other two characters shown were a large fire Breathing beast as well as an ice breathing beast. When the game is complete you'll be able to morph into more than eight creatures, each with their own special abilities and fighting techniques. You'll also be able to manipulate your genetic DNA system to assign powerful and strategic attributes to each beast. The action was pretty fast, and the metamorphosis into the beasts looked quite cool with CG sequences displaying the transformations from man to beast.

Hopefully unlike its Gameboy Advance predecessor, this version of Altered Beast improves on the original instead of setting it back further. Release: Sometime in 2004, unfortunately. Look forward to the video as part of our E3 video blowout.

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games