Some time ago, Ubisoft came out with a series of really good games: Prince of Persia, XIII, Splinter Cell; just a lot of good games, most of which are still played today. However, in the midst of so many good games, it’s actually an often occurrence that some of those good games don’t get the credit they deserve. No doubt, you’ve might have seen the ads for Beyond Good and Evil, showing a girl sneaking around with a camera. By looking at these ads, one might think that this game is just a rip off of Pokemon Snap with more edge! Let me assure you that is and never was the case.
Story: The planet of Hillis is threatened by a menacing parasitic alien race known as the DomZ. They take many of the Hillians captive and assimilate them into energy for their own profit. Thankfully, the tactical and powerful might of the Alpha Section forces have managed to keep the DomZ from wiping out the Hillian race, but as the DomZ come close to the borders of Hillis, a greater threat becomes imminent.
You play as Jade, a young woman who lives in a lighthouse with her adopted pig-uncle, Pey’j (I’m not kidding, he’s a pig-man and he’s awesome) and takes care of orphans who have lost their parents to the war between Hillis and the aliens. Additionally, she takes reporting missions to get special photos for those who offer enough credits. Because of this, she trains with a staff to protect herself on more dangerous missions.
One day, after barely surviving a DomZ attack, Jade receives a mission from a mysterious investor named ‘Mr. Decastellac’ and from there, she’s forced into a journey to uncover a immense conspiracy between the DomZ and the Alpha Section, sworn to protect Hillis from the alien threat.
The story is told through many cutscenes with cinematic value, that might even fool players into thinking they’re watching a 3D Animated movie instead of a game cutscene. You could say that this game’s cutscene are on par with Metal Gear Solid. However, while the characters are creative and likable, there’s a lot of moments where they use the line, “If it wasn’t for you, then I…” and this happens on nearly every close encounter in the game. It’s somewhat repetitive. Another major downfall of the story is that its way too short and it ends with a cliffhanger ending. Now this usually isn’t so bad, because a cliffhanger usually means there’s going to be a sequel, right? That was supposed to the be the case, but because of its commercial failure, Ubisoft declared that there aren’t going to be anymore add-ons to the series… at least… not any time soon, so weep while you can.
The main characters all have their quirky traits and personalities, and I found each of them to be very lovable in their own ways. However, the one thing that makes the story of Beyond Good and Evil is that the designers created an entire world that consists of its own technologies, its own special events, currency, and society; it even has its own unique version of a black market. I have to give credit to the designers that they could make a world so interesting while being original in the process.
All in all, the story is still quite good, with twists and excellent development of the characters; all of the main ones are lovable in some fashion. Despite it’s shortness and a current lack of continuation, other designers might want to take an example from this game when creating a new world for a game.
Gameplay: A way describing the gameplay of Beyond Good and Evil in a simple fashion is that it’s pretty much a Zelda clone. That being said, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, far from it. What I mean by that it share many similarities, but it isn’t a complete copy.
Firstly is the combat; using a mix of a the right analog stick and the attack button, Jade can wielding her staff like a pro, opening up cans of butt whooping on the many monsters you’ll encounter and even the threat of the DomZ.
One of the major differences from Zelda, is that Jade is hardly ever on her own. Most of time, she’s accompanied by her uncle Pey’j, or special soldier, Double H. While these two act more as a distraction in regular combat, they do have some neat tricks that stun enemies and open up a sort of “slo-mo” precise hit to Jade, allowing her to deliver massive damage to her enemies. Melee combat feels and plays smoothly, but one major flaw in the combat comes to ranged attack.
Some way into the game, you gain a tool to launch discs at distanced enemies, but you do this through going into a stationary first-person view where you manually aim a cursor to the target and fire. It’s not so much that the ranged system doesn’t work; it just doesn’t feel as epic or intuitive as the melee combat.
The adventuring part of the game consists of navigating through dungeons and caverns abound, riddled with puzzles that aren’t difficult to solve, but it’s enough keep brain juices pumping with creativity. Like in combat, your allies provide assistance, but it’s in this section where their abilities really shine. For example, Pey’j is a inventor and one of his more handy invention are his jump boots, which pretty much makes him jump up high and bring his fat piggy butt down on contraptions that can open gates, or catapult Jade to areas previously unreachable. Your partners each have tools that make them invaluable to navigating dungeons.
Meanwhile, Jade is very lithe and is able to get to many places that her friends aren’t and you’ll solve your own share of puzzles on your own, but one of the more challenging factors as Jade is the stealth. Jade is a sneaky woman and there will be many instances where you’ll have to avoid detection or face the might of enemies far to strong to fight in single combat, but the sneaking is fairly forgiving, especially since Jade isn’t such a easy pushover and there are hiding spots to start over the sneaking section.
Then, there is the hovercraft part of the game. I know! It’s just awesome. Combat, Dungeon-crawling, stealth sections, AND you still get a hovercraft! This game has everything, but I digress.
As your main method of transportation, the hovercraft is a useful vehicle… after it gets repaired anyway. One of neat things about your hovercraft is that, it’ll be mandatory to acquire special add-ons to your hovercraft, such as a targeting cannon, a lift to help bypass borders, and so on. Not only are there some pretty fun fights against the DomZ creatures, but a lot of exciting chases and races as well. This part of the game only gets better as you buy more add-ons for the craft. This is probably one of my favorite parts of the game.
Finally, the game is cram packed with tons and tons of side quests, including infiltrated military headquarters to winning a plethora of mini-games to giving a photo collection of every single animal in the game. While all these side quests don’t make the game much longer than it really is, there provide a fun distraction from the main story.
Graphics: The graphics are very good for their time and with cinematic effects like blurring, camera panning, and slow-motion, the cut scenes good skillfully done. Not to mention the various settings of the game look creative, with beautiful landscapes, to horrid sights of brutality and danger. The characters themselves are also beautiful with creative designs with excellent lip synching and good facial expressions that gives players a good idea how the characters feel. The graphics are splendid.
Sound: I’ve noticed something in the games I’ve played. Usually, when a game has a memorable melody that serves as a basis for the most of the major music in the game, then that soundtrack is often quite good. Don’t believe me? Take a listen to the music of God of War or Shadow of the Colossus. Beyond Good and Evil follows this same method and the melody they use, changes the feeling of the scene depending on how it’s played, from a peaceful tranquil music piece that emanates a sense of harmony to a noble sounded piece that makes the player feel sort of proud of their accomplishments.
This isn’t the entire soundtrack, far from it. The rest of the soundtrack works out nicely, because they make the player feel alarmed when they’re spotted by patrols or running from enemies in a chase sequence, or make them feel like this world of Hillis is a world worth fighting for because of the beauty that it emits (think Shire from Lord of the Rings).
The voice acting is good, though most of the soldiers in the Alpha Section are either all clones, close relatives, or just conveniently sound very much alike. Other than that small tidbit, the plot characters are voice by good actors and hardly did I find a moment that the acting felt stale.
Overall: It’s a good game that hardly received the credit that it deserved. Despite getting excellent reviews, people just didn’t buy it for some reason. While back when it might’ve cost 40 dollars, I would say rent it or wait till the price dropped (which was actually rather quick), but if you can find it today, it will probably be relatively cheap; 20 dollars maximum at most game stores. If you like adventure games, then there should be no reason not to give this lost relic a shot.
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