It’s hard to tell a lot of the time whether or not I’m going to enjoy a game until I’ve finished it, and considering my mind-crippling short attention span, its not uncommon for me to just give up on a game in the begininng. This was not the case of Beyond Good an Evil. For one reason or another, I could tell I would love this game, even when just opening the menu. It felt new, fresh, even for just a Playstaition 2 game. It turned out to be much more than that.
For those who haven’t heard of Beyond Good an Evil, its a multiplatform game(PS2/GC/PC/Xbox/PSN/XBLA/microwave oven) published by Ubisoft and directed by Micheal Ancel, famous for making the Rayman series. The game tells of a photojournalist named Jade whom lives on a lighthouse island on the planet Hillys. Planet Hillys has been under attacked by a species of Cthulu-esque aliens called “The DomZ”, which you’d probrably guess by the name isn’t exactly the most pacifist species in the galaxy. On the lighthouse Island with Jade lives her guardian, Uncle Peyj and several orphaned children, orphaned by the war with the DomZ.
Now that you know all that stuff, you might ask why this game is so special enough for me to review, or you might ask yourself why it took me two paragraphs for to introduce the game in the first place. Now you’re thinking I’m psychic. Know you want to stop reading because your scared I might find all that weird porn you hide while I’m in your head. No worries, it’ll be our little secret. Anyways, Back on topic, I like Beyond Good and Evil for the message it gives to people, the strong characters, the great story, and gameplay that revealed something about myself.
BG&E could be considered a Zelda clone in its own outright, and people have said as much, popular video game magazine Gameinformer as an example. While the game, to my surprise, does have gameplay elements for the Zelda franchise, I found BG&E to be a bit more exploration based. It doesn’t really seem to focus on combat, and thus the combat is generic, not really the exciting part of the formula. The exploration based gameplay is fantastic, and like metroidvanian titles, while there isn’t alot of world there, its full of things to do. Because of the games excellent pacing, new minigames, environments, possibilities, and upgrades become available, making the world feel alive.
A problem I did find was the contrast of the games tone and the cartoony graphics. The game could have been a lot more tense and somewhat frightening, espicially near the end, were you basically meet the leader of the cthulhu-monster things. While it doesn’t really ruin the game tone, and the message it brings is still easily brought forward, it feels like a weird choice to make. Speaking of weird choices, the game often(and by often I mean basically the whole game) forces you to go through forced stealth sections. Most gamers, mostly FPS gamers, would say that thats a bad thing, because 90% of forced stealth sections are tedious and frustrating. Regardless, not only were these stealth sections good, they were great.
Environments are great, aesthetics work nice all things considered. Sound is decent, but will get very annoying if listening to it for too long. This game is ultimately fantastic, but it was also something more. th message it tries to convey to people is peaceful protest. Most games(Half Life 2, my next review) have you wielding an ultra badass, and he doesn’t like the establishment, they knocks down there door and kill everyone. That’s not what about BG&E is aout. It’s about using the media to tell the truth and undercover things you should know, but aren’t getting told. I’m pretty sure we all can respect that. Except FOX News.
