Beyond Good and Evil GAME COMPLETE.

[xyzzysqrl]

Game: Beyond Good and Evil
Played Before Now: Yes
Time played: 14 hours
Finished? Yes
Will I Go Back? Not right now
How Much is it Right Now? $10
Did I pay that? No, I paid $3
Recommended? Yes.


I love this game.
I hate this game.

This game deserves to be more widely known.
This game is enormously overrated.

I have a certain amount of what one might call -conflict- about this game.

Okay, thirty second rundown for people who haven't played this: You're Jade and you're a photojournalist. You take pictures for a living and run a shelter for war orphans. Your 'Uncle', Pey'j, is a pig. (As in, sentient anthropomorphic porcine person.) Evil space aliens called the "DomZ" are invading your home planet. It's cool though, the "Alpha Sections", a mysterious military force, have taken over the government and are fighting the DomZ for you. Just stay placid and in your homes and they'll solve everything. Right? Sure. It's a video game, you know it's not easy like that.

The game-world of Beyond Good and Evil is amazing. Planet Hillys is a beautiful watery place full of hidden caves and -stuff- to explore. Jade, your journalistic heroine, knows everybody in the city and has some history with all of them, which you can pick out in little tidbits by chatting with everyone you see as often as you can. You can go hunt up pearls, explore places you're not supposed to be, play a weird air-hockey style game in the bar... there is stuff to do. The music in this game is great. (My personal favorite tracks are Propaganda and the... aggressively laid back Mammago Garage music.)

I cannot overstate how much I enjoy the roaming around and not-doing-stuff in Beyond Good and Evil. I really can't. I feel like I can recognize most of the completely minor bit-characters on sight, I know who they are and I've chattered at them all. I like just taking the hovercraft out and buzzing around, probing into dark caves and doing races and such. Finding animals to photograph for the scientific "ark" database of all the world's creatures feels fun and somewhat rewarding. The exploration and adventure parts of Beyond Good and Evil are some of my favorite parts of any game.

Then you start to get into the 'meat' of what the plot wants you to do, which is sneak into Alpha Section bases and photograph their horrible sapient-rights violations to get the people of Hillys¹ roused and moving.

THIS part, I kind of hate.

I don't mind that if you're caught, you're often too weak to fight back hand-to-hand and need to run away and re-hide, then restart the room. That makes sense in a video-gamey way. However, later in the game, if you're caught you instantly die and have to restart the room. That just feels MEAN. Fundamentally it's the same thing, but one involves a sudden breaking of the player's concentration with a *BZAP* and a slow-motion death scene. I shouldn't hate this part of the game because A: It's the core foundation of the gameplay and B: the game really does jump through hoops to make the stealth gameplay forgiving. You can see lines-of-sight, you can usually escape a blown cover situation, and you're occasionally allowed to shoot dudes in the air pack and ass-kick them 'til they explode.²

I hate it anyway. I'm largely okay with the rest of the combat, even if it kind of "flail your staff around until everything in the room is dead, then eat a taco", but for some reason the Alphas just trigger a "SIGH HERE WE GO" reaction in me. Not sure why. I love games like Thief and Deus Ex, which are totally all about sneaking past enemies. Here it feels flat for me. Can't quite explain it.

Other combat in the game is Just Okay. Some of the boss fights require clever moves, but most of the combat is either "have Jade flail with stick" or "push partner button to activate double-team move, then flail with stick", then cram down tacos³ because of all the damage you took.

I guess what I want here is Beyond Pointing and Clicking, the adventure game. Golly. Here's me thinking a game would be improved as a point-and-clicker. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.⁴

But... yeah. I love this game, MOST of the time. I think the parts I love overcome the parts I hate, and I'm happy about that. The thing is of course that you don't really -get- games like this anymore. You have this and the Zelda series and maybe Darksiders in a dark twisted way and that's IT. That's sad to me. I want more games like this.

Maybe not exactly like this. But I could cope.

(The excessive mirror/reflector/light beam puzzles in the ending? Those can stay. I love those. I DON'T KNOW WHY. I shouldn't. But I do.)

Oh! Let's make this EVEN LONGER. I should also mention Double H, who is made of awesome. He's a large man in power armor with a truly HEROIC chin, who is constantly quoting from the Carlson and Peeters manual, which is something like Sun Tzu's Big Book of War for the Hillyian Regular Army. Except... the Carlson and Peeters handbook runs on anime rules. You do not break up an awesome team. You respect the home team (even if you're not the home team, you still try to have some respect for them). You protect what's yours. I love the Carlson and Peeters manual and I would buy the five+ volume desk library. ...of course, the Hillyian Regular Army are the guys who got boned over by the Alphas and DomZ, so er maybe their methods are not the best, but I DON'T CARE DAMNIT.

(Also if you have a modern console, get Beyond Good and Evil HD. The PC port is... questionable at best.)

BONUS SECTION: So what would Beyond Good and Evil 2 play like anyway?

One thing to recall is that this game is coming up on ten years old soon. BG&E yoinked the best and brightest features from everything around it: Wind Waker, Pokemon Snap, maybe a little splash of Metroid Prime in there, it had minigame races and collectathon gameplay and an unexpected final act in a surprising locale with a boss fight that draws out a big gulp of Panzer Dragoon... But think about it. Ten years?

This came out the same time as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. It just missed the Parkor Gameplay Revolution, where now every adventure/action hero(ine) has to be able to wallrun just to be taken seriously. Jade is a fricking NIMBLE girl, she could manage that. (I so adore the way Jade is animated.) She could potentially rival Faith, from Mirror's Edge.

In a way, Dead Rising built on the camera-based gameplay. I could see Jade snapping optional objectives for bonus points, although she might not be as cynical or eager to stage a good shot as Frank West.

The ending of BG&E leaves Jade with a setup for certain... abilities, mystical powers perhaps. Where would they draw on for those?

Given ten long years of game history between then and now, what would YOU raid for ideas in a sequel?

¹: I wonder if it's coincidental (and sort of doubt it is) that most of the Hillys nonhumans are creatures like goats, walruses, bulls, and such. Fairly docile creatures, but with obvious horns and teeth, means of fighting back if wronged. Meanwhile I am slightly sad that there are no actual sheep people on Hillys. You cannot stand there going WAKE UP SHEEPLE and flailing about in town square.

²: Jade's kick animation is hilarious. You could just as well call this game "Booting Good and Evil In the Arse". She really puts her whole leg into it. Girl has moves.

³: Oh my god these things look delicious.

⁴: This is sarcasm.

-- ANYWAY --

So that's another game down for the Hat Project! Next selection, please?




See you next time, under the sea.

Comments

[relee.livejournal.com]

You like mirror laser puzzles, huh? Did you know there's a board game all about that? It's called Khet.

I still need to play Beyond Good and Evil someday. I'm sure I will. Someday.

[(Anonymous)]

I never really knew anything about this game, other than 'Oh, I think I've heard that name.'

I think I'll go spend some saved-up MSpoints. This sounds neat!

--dang bunni