Beyond Good & Evil

Beyond Good & Evil is a third-person action/adventure game that combines an impressively simplified combat system with stealth and espionage elements. I thoroughly enjoyed the unique characters that were both interesting and realistic (or as realistic as a talking boar mechanic called Pej'j). The use of a camera as evidence of Alpha Section's misdeeds is an effective gaming tool that really immerses you in the action. Furthermore, the story that unfolds as you uncover more about Alpha Section and their connection to the DomZ is particularly interesting. Basically this game is for anyone who enjoys an interesting story with compelling characters, good combat and animation, an impressive level design and uniquely designed creatures.

It's truly sad that nobody played this game, because it is a gem and available for all 3 previous-gen systems. It's a mix of Zelda-style puzzle-focused dungeons and exploration with sci-fi themes and a heavy emphasis on stealth. I think the design succeeds more than the actual execution in some parts. Jade isn't the best-controlling main character ever, but the design IS great, and she's the star of one of the better game stories I've ever experienced... I'm not talking about your crazy RPG plots, I'm saying I actually gave a damn about the characters and felt for them. Truly a game that everyone should play. My only real problem was that completing the story required you to collect a bunch of pearls to repair your vehicle, and that can get tedious.

Beyond Good and Evil is one of the best games I've played for the Gamecube. Not only does it have one of the best stories for a video game, it also has great graphics, sound, an awesome control scheme. The only adventure game that is better than this is Windwaker, mostly because of the length and sheer amounts of things to do. The game is just way to short to warrant a full $50 price, so this might be why it initially failed to get sales. I probably would be annoyed if I paid more than $20 for it, but luckily I found it for $12. It was worth every penny spent. It shouldn't be hard to find for a cheap price right now. If you like adventure games, there's no excuse to miss out on Beyond Good and Evil.

----------Battle System----------
Beyond Good and Evil reminds me of the Legend of Zelda and this is not a bad thing. I love Zelda clones, but the control scheme, items and health system is to similar to not mention. Jade uses a bow-staff as a weapon, but there's no upgrades for it, so she never gets stronger. The biggest difference is Jade requires alot more stealth than Link in games. Although in Windwaker there's a few times where you need to use stealth to get passed guards or lights, alot of Beyond Good and Evils missions are similar to this. The only times where you'll need to fight is by fighting aliens, bugs or any other non-humanoid creatures. The times where you need to fight a humanoid is pretty rare. This adds to the puzzle solving in the game.

Similar to the Metroid Prime scanning system, you can go into First Person view to take pictures of animals within the world. After you finish a roll of film you can trade it for special items and Pearls. You'll find more Pearls within the game by defeating bosses, completing minigames or found hidden within stages. You trade these pearls to the Mammago Garage to upgrade your ship and other assorted items. You also have a credit card and gain credit points after taking pictures of animals. You can use these credits to buy items scattered around the world in vendor machines.

Throughout the game you'll get special items that help you advance in the game. You'll find keys, a glove that shoots discs in First Person view (you can snipe enemies with this as well). You can find a Pearl and Animal Detector within the game, this helps you complete all the Pearls and Animal pictures. The items list is not exactly as large as Zelda, but its a short game so you make good use for the few items you have. In the game you only play as Jade, but you also get a partner that will come with you on your quest. Depending on the current storyline, you can bring along with you Double-H or your uncle Pey'J. Similar to Star Fox Adventures you can control that character by selecting commands for them to do. You can ask one of them to stand on a trigger while you go through a door or ask one of them to break down a wall for you. Unlike Star Fox Adventures your partner will fight along side of you and help you out. They're not the best of help though, so you'll be doing most of the fighting. Like Zelda, your HP is repisented by hearts. You can find PA-1 hearts through out the game and give them to either Jade or your partner. You control how many hearts you have and you can switch them in and out at anytime of the game. When a character leaves your party the items go back into your stock.

There's alot of racing within this game aswell. Some are sidequests to gain pearls. They lack the depth of a full blown racer like F-Zero or kart game like Mario Kart, but that is expected.

----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Jade, a photographer / reporter, kind of a den mother for orphans and a member of an underground resistance group. It's your job to expose the corrupted government of the Hillz and to spread the word with underground newsletters. I loved the story, I don't think I've played anything similar to it. The dialog is usually pretty good and even talking to the people on the streets is pretty interesting. The best part is watching propaganda videos on the walls scattered across the town.

----------Graphics----------
The graphics really impressed me. I think there was a few pre-rendered cutscenes, but most of the game is told in game cutscenes. The in game cut-scenes are really good, possibly better than Kingdom Hearts. The characters just show alot more emotion than most games can create. Xenosagas might have the best in-games cut scenes I’ve seen, but Beyond Good and Evil is pretty close.

I love the colors in the game, they use alot of greens and blues. The Ocean looks great, its amazing to find a giant whale just splashing around.

----------Sound----------
The voice overs are awesome. Every character has a ton of personality to them. Jade is soft spoken, Pey'j has a tough guy voice, Segundo is effeminate Cuban, while the stoner Mammago guys talk in a Jamacian accents. The music is epic and keeps you glue in the game. This is some of the best music I've heard in a game, it's up there with Final Fantasy.

----------World Map----------
The world map is small closed in map similar to Ocarina of Time, but the world is mostly made of water and full of island like Windwaker. The size is closer to Ocarina of Time though. You ride around early in the game on a ship that your uncle built. Everytime you upgrade it at the Mammago Garage you can unlock new areas to explore. Your final transportation is a flying ship, you barely get enough time to enjoy it before the game ends though. You can view an overhead view of the whole world map when you're looking for Pearls or Animals locations. There's only a few safe areas in the game, and only one of them is a town. In the town you can play minigames, buy items, talk to people and find secrets. There's only about four or five dungeons within the game, pretty small. There's plenty of secrets and animals to find on the world map though, so that can keep you busy for a couple hours.

----------Time to Complete Game (first run through)----------
14:00

Very short game, I completed it 100%. I haven't played it for 8 months, but I'm pretty sure there's no reward for beating it, although there was a hint of a sequel after the credits.

Beyond Good & Evil is an action/adventure game where you play as Jade, a woman that wears all green, knows kung-fu, moonlights as a photographer, and is generally too cool for school. Your planet has been attacked by the evil DOMz, and is now under the protection of the Alpha Sections. However, all is not as it seems. Throughout the course of your adventure, you'll infiltrate some shady operations and expose the truth about what's going on. This takes the form of battling enemies, running hovercraft races, taking lots of photographs, and sneaking through heavily guarded bases.

The first thing that stands out about BGE is how great it looks. The game has a cool visual style. Ubisoft didn't go for a realistic look, but the world of Hillys is bright and colorful, with a variety of creatures roaming around. You'll be travelling via hovercraft, so the water was given a lot of love. It looks great. The characters are animated nicely and have a real personality all their own. There's also a lot of little details throughout. Jade runs a lighthouse, which is home to a lot of kids. You'll see crayon drawings on the wall, unmade beds, and toys lying around. Other places throughout the world have similar little details sprinkled throughout. They add up to a nice, believably lived-in world.

Beyond just looking good, BGE also has some terrific audio. All of the voice acting is done very well, especially Jade. She does a great job in showing real fear, pain, joy, and sadness as the plot moves on. This is also helped by the excellent animation done during the cutscenes. The soundtrack is nice and matches the mood of the places you visit.

There's a number of different things to do in this game, and they're all serviceable, but not great. You'll spend a lot of time moving across the water in your hovercraft. There's not a lot of variety to it, but you'll have to fight enemies, run some races, and outrun a fleet of baddies that are chasing you down. You'll also be spending a lot of time in first-person mode. Since Jade is a photographer, you'll be taking photos of all manner of things and using this view to shoot enemies and solving puzzles. The main sidequest involves cataloging all of Hillys' animals. I was amazed at the number of different animals that they included in this game. You'll have to be creative to get some of them, and the hunt for these creatures was always fun. I didn't like how much of a pain to get in and out of first-person mode quickly. During some of the boss battles this caused me to take some unneccessary damage. Fighting is really simplistic. Just jam on the attack button until the enemies died. Lastly, you'll be doing a lot of stealth in this game. I found it a bit boring and easy. The guards are really stupid, and seem to have a very hard time seeing things that are right in front of them. Basically, you just need to crouch and you'll be able to get around unseen.

Well, it would be that simple if the game's camera weren't so horrible. The camera in BGE is controlled with the right thumb stick, but it rarely does what you want it to do. I spent more time babysitting this camera than I did my last puppy. By the end of the game, I was so fed up with it that I just wanted to beat the last boss so I wouldn't ever have to fix the camera again.

It didn't take long for that wish to come true. BGE is short. It's very, very short. I completed everything there was to do in this game in 10 hours. And that's without using a cheat guide or anything. The puzzles were pretty easy, the world is pretty small, and the plot is pretty short. I didn't mind that this game was so short, because I was ready to put it down by the time that I got to the end.

Beyond Good & Evil is a great, bite-sized morsel of a game. There are some great moments in it, and I enjoyed playing it. However, it does wrap up before you know it, and the game does lose steam by the end. While there are a number of things to do, there's no real depth to any of them. This game was a treat, but I would only recommend picking it up for $10 or less.

Upon release, Rayman creator Michael Ancel's Beyond Good & Evil was met with critical acclaim and, regrettably, relatively poor sales; this was attributed by many to be due to the fact that BG&E was released at roughly the same time as big Ubisoft titles like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, which, as we all know, were very successful releases and went on to spawn multiple sequels. With that, Beyond Good & Evil was left behind, going on to become one of the favorite cult games of all time, along with titles like Psychonauts.

The story of Beyond Good & Evil takes place on the fictional world of Hillys, which is being invaded by an alien race known as the DomZ, who harvest the inhabitants of Hillys and drain them of their life force. Photojournalist Jade and her "uncle" Pey'j are drawn into a conspiracy shortly after taking on an assignment that proves to be a test given them by operatives of the IRIS Network, whose goal is to expose a large scale DomZ conspiracy to lull the denizens of Hillys into a false sense of security and slowly abduct and either infect or consume all sentient life. Jade and her companions, both "uncle" Pey'j and ex-military IRIS operative Double H, will set out to expose the DomZ conspiracy and eventually bring the evil alien race to their knees in an epic science-fiction adventure. The story, it seems, takes a page from Greek philosopher Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," in which one person escapes the pseudo-reality projected before them and takes upon their shoulders the task of disillusioning the rest of their people with the truth of what's going on around them; and, for me at least, this was a very interesting aspect of the narrative.

Beyond Good & Evil has been called a "Zelda-clone" by many, and while it does borrow some aspects of Zelda's tried-and-true formula, it also throws in a few of its own. Obviously, as an action adventure game, you'll encounter a variety of enemies and obstacles like puzzles, but many of these favor teamwork over rushing in and unleashing death and woe upon your doomed enemies, and more often than not, you'll find yourself resorting to stealth rather than combat. Some situations, to elaborate on that, will favor stealth over combat but can be taken on either way if push comes to shove; other times, you'll find yourself required to either fight or move unseen through a large room full of enemies.

The bulk of Beyond Good & Evil's roughly 15-hour main story is spread out across several missions that typically send you to some dangerous location to obtain more and more evidence to expose the alien conspiracy. Between missions, you're generally free, and often encouraged, to explore Hillys in search of various side missions and visit the many shops to obtain upgrades for both your hovercraft, which you'll be using a lot in both battles and exploration, and fairly often in races for prizes valuable in nature.

With the main protagonist being a photojournalist, you're going to be doing a great deal of photography, both on the job and off. There are many life forms across the planet that you'll find both during missions and outside of them. These include everything from people walking the streets to the very same creatures you'll be fighting. Some of these can be difficult to get photographs of, particularly when they're trying to kill you, but you'll usually be given an opportunity outside of battles to get a shot of hostile life-forms, and every time you complete a collection of about 10 photos, you receive a reward of money and usually a Pearl, which is a rare item you gain through various side-missions that can be exchanged for upgrades to your hovercraft.

Most of the time, Jade will be working her way through maps to find points of interest, generally having to solve puzzles that will more often than not require the cooperation of either Pey'j or Double H. This typically isn't a problem, because the friendly AI is usually pretty responsive, but they'll occasionally drop the ball or get caught on objects, and getting them back on track can be a bit of a chore. Also, some of the puzzles do tend to repeat themselves throughout the areas, and it will occasionally come off as tedious, climbing between those two beams to kick that gear. Still, new facets are added to the mix often enough that it usually won't be much of a hindrance. For example, though the stealth sections can be frustrating at times, new elements and layouts typically make each segment feel completely different.

Combat is simple enough in Beyond Good & Evil, usually executed through combos with the X button, also allowing you to evade and guard against enemy attacks. Occasionally, you'll need to use a powerful charge attack, which deals damage to enemies within a given radius and temporarily stuns them. Later in the game, you'll be able to purchase an item that enhances this ability to an extent, allowing you to unleash energy projectiles with a rapid button press to further damage enemies within a slightly larger range. You'll also have your partners, both Pey'j and Double H to assist you in combat, and while they attack on their own, you can also use the Triangle button to cause them to unleash a team attack with you, which briefly knocks enemies airborne and allows you to send them flying in any direction you choose (indicated by a translucent targeting reticule); some puzzles will even require you to do this to either start an object in motion or clear a wall of some kind. Also, as you progress through the game, you'll gain objects to increase the life energy of both you and your allies, and you'll find that an even distribution of these usually makes for the best setup in battle.

The boss battles are generally fun, and each one typically offers its own unique aspect; a few of these battles even take place in vehicles. One boss fight is a sort of Whack-a-Mole-like battle that has you fighting a large flying worm beast that bursts from holes in the ground and occasionally flies trough the air to attack you and your partner from above. Other battles have you fighting huge skeletal serpents on the water, slowly blasting away segments of their bodies until they finally explode and sink to the bottom of the bay. The final boss fight is easily the most difficult in the game and has your controls reversed for the final stretch, while the opening segments have you fighting illusions of your teammates off to eventually land an attack on the boss itself.

One of BG&E's finer points is the graphical presentation, which is admirable. Hillys is, simply put, big and very pretty. While the open-world aspect of the game pales slightly in comparison with many that have been released since, Hillys never really feels limited. The textures are particularly nice-looking, and for its time, Beyond Good & Evil's water graphics are among the best. The shadows in the game project well, though there are occasionally some odd instances of shadows projecting onto walls or ceiling strangely; this usually doesn't occur, but there are a few rare instances in which it's difficult to miss.

The characters themselves, both in animation and modeling, look fantastic; it's almost like a Saturday morning action cartoon that you play through and advance on your own. As you progress through the story, you'll find more and more people switching to the side of the IRIS Network and protesting in the streets of the main city. The attacks, post-battle animations, cutscene animations and expressions; everything is masterfully done and rendered gorgeously. Jade's emotions are well-represented as well; she has a pained expression when struck, shows constant worry in some of the later segments, and during battles and stealth sequences her face shows a look of steadfast determination. At a few points the game gets very emotional, and the great visuals really help to convey this.

The voice acting is almost always great, with a few minor blemishes here and there, but every single voice, down to the very last, fits perfectly. As you wander about the various areas in Hillys, you'll hear a lot of conversations between people around towns and in other areas. Over the town's loudspeaker, you'll hear speeches from a military group's leader that gradually rise in intensity and desperation as the story progresses. The music is among the most atmospheric in a game to date, ranking right up there with the soundtrack of the Silent Hill survival horror series for pure atmosphere. It seems to have distinct oriental sound to it, noticeable in the lighthouse background theme and some of the music played in the shops around the main city. This isn't to say that the soundtrack isn't varied. There's a bit of electronic, almost industrial music in some of the areas, and one of the shops has a distinct reggae-type music playing from a radio whenever you enter.

Although Beyond Good & Evil is pretty short, and sports a couple graphical and AI-related issues, it's truly something to behold. And while it doesn't sport a whole lot of replay value, the endearing characters, beautiful environments and soundtrack, and engaging gameplay should keep you coming back for more. At the bargain price of under $20 now, Beyond Good & Evil is one of the best-value games out there, and you can't go wrong with it.

As you start to play Beyond Good & Evil, you will instantly be reminded of The Legend of Zelda. Indeed, the gameplay is very similar to Ocarina of Time or any of the other main titles that came after, but as you play you will find that BG&E offers a little more than your typical Zelda game.

You, Jade, are a reporter on the planet Hillys during a war with the alien DomZ. I wont sit here and ruin the whole story for you, but the game world, while small, is very vibrant and colorful. You'll notice that many citizens of of Hillys are animals, and that with the graphical style will instantly remind you of a childrens book. Even so, as you play, you'll notice that the story elements are a little more mature than you typical childrens book (or Zelda game), and in a very short time, you'll be drawn into the conflict. The characters are all very well designed and written, and you'll care about them when they run into problems. The voice acting helps quite a bit in this regard. For such a cheap game, they really went the extra mile, getting good voice actors.

Gameplay, as I said, is very much like Zelda, right down to the hearts. There are a few more elements to it. You'll have companions that follow you around, and you can give them some of your hearts so they survive longer in battle. You'll find, though, that there really isn't much point, as you'll be doing most of the fighting and taking most of the damage. The companion AI in combat isn't that great. They're main gameplay purpose is to provide you with interesting puzzles, as they often require the help of your companion. In battle, companions often sit around waiting for you to tell them to use their special ability.

On my machine the game wasn't particularly buggy all around, but scattered around are a small number of really big bugs that can break your game. You'll want to manage your saves well, though it is such a problem that the games forums have clean saves that you can download if you do run into one of these big ones.

The biggest gameplay flaw is the camera. Particularly when you are in your hover boat, the camera will often spin out of control for no reason. Other times, on foot, the camera perspective will change unexpectedly and you have to switch keys to move in the same direction. These issues are usually minor, but they can get annoying sometimes.

Despite a few flaws, the action and puzzles are fun, and the story is top notch. For 10 bucks off steam, I'd definitely recommend you buy it. I'd recommend it even if it was 20, maybe even 30.