I promised it, and here it is – an over-long gushing review of Beyond Good and Evil! Feel free to stop paying attention around about now.
Why is it that great games go unnoticed while other, rubbish games, like Dri3ver (such is my contempt for its silly 1337 name, I’ve spelt it completely wrong!) manage to top the charts despite apparently being crapped out as an unfinished, shoddy mess? I presume it is because there is no God – or perhaps there is, but he’s a bit of a bastard. Admit it God! You could make people buy Beyond Good and Evil and Grim Fandango and Hardwar in their thousands if you wanted! So why don’t you, arse features? Yeah, strike me down and smite me if you want, but you can’t, because you don’t exist!
Apart from proving conclusively the non-existence of God, or at least that he’s a bit of a git, Beyond Good and Evil is a brilliant game. Everything about its superficial little surface oozes originality and general coolness, from the themed music in its various locales (”prrropaganda!”), to the expansive and beautifully drawn world inhabited by the characters.
Oh, characters? Yes, indeed – look below that beautiful glossy surface and you find: characters. Not something I’m used to finding in action-adventures – at least, not good characters who feel as though they’re anything more than a late addition – but the ones in BG&E are fantastically well done. One of the game’s major missed opportunities is the absense of adventure-game style branching dialogue, which I think would greatly enhance just about any action-adventure title, but especially this one. The characters all seem to have backgrounds worth investigating – particularly the kids rescued by Jade and her uncle – but all you get is a glimpse into their lives with short, linear conversations. A shame! But it’s not all bad news – the characters are realised better than in any other action-adventure I can readily think of, with each of the children having their own habits – from the foreign girl’s tendency to sleep outside to the one who prefers to sit in the corner. In addition, as you begin to turn the tide of public opinion on Hillys, previously hostile or agnostic characters begin to show their support for you. And this is without even mentioning your companions during battle, who – although they sometimes abandon you because they “can’t fit” or are suffering some other contrived difficulty – provide help rather than hindrance and help you along with their jokey dialogue.
But enough about this stuff! So the graphics are nice (so pretty!) and the music is pretty cool (”prrrropaganda!”) and all the fighting is sort of fun. What’s truly revolutionary, or at least, really dead good? I’m rapidly writing too much, so here are some things that stood out.
The boss fights – I usually have mixed feelings about these harbingers of terror, designed solely to provide an unnatural barrier to your progress. Yes, they break up the gameplay, because they’re completely at odds with the rest of the game. Well-done bosses can seem like worthy additions, involving real skill and cunning to beat, while badly done bosses are just a pointless exercise in shooting it in the eye, waiting for its arsehole to open and firing a grenade inside. Three times, of course. Thankfully, the bosses in BG&E fall into the former camp – they’re all well-designed beasts, and their defeat is usually a matter of progressively weakening them, rather than employing the same tactic time after time. The final boss in particular is just pure evil, but he’s all the more fun for it – I haven’t been so frustrated at a game for years.
The stealth elements – I think there were rather too many of these, to be honest. But the stealth sections were mainly well-designed and importantly, very achieveable – and only once did the game ask me to memorise where guards would appear.
The music – prrropaganda!
The plot – it’s a little bit lightweight, true. You, as the player and the character, know exactly what’s going on almost as soon as the game begins. It’s proving it to the population of Hillys that’s important, a rather original thought, and along the way you’ll encounter some twists and turns. As the game skilfully makes you care about the characters – rare indeed for a video game – these twists have quite a bit of impact (accentuated, naturally, by the excellent musical score) – making you want to get on and prove the conspiracy once and for all. How do you prove it? Your trusty camera.
Camera? Yes. THE most original aspect of the game is also one of the most enjoyable. You see, you’re a reporter – and you carry a camera around, snapping photographs. Occasionally you’re called upon to take photographs for a news story, but mainly, you’re taking nature photographs for money. This is a fantastic gimmick – not only does it force you to explore the game world thoroughly, it really makes you appreciate the effort that’s gone into creating the various creatures that inhabit Hillys.
Final thing, I promise. No, really, come back! I used to think that a truly amazing cutscene was only possible outside of the game engine – to produce that ’something special’, you had to drop out of the game world and into pre-rendered land. That was when I was young and foolish, and before I played BG&E (and to a lesser extent, the latest Legend of Zelda games). What I’m trying to say is: BG&E’s cutscenes are exemplary. Cinematic excellence. And of course, they have excellent music. Always with the music.
Beyond Good and Evil is a sorely overlooked game. And it’s cheap, and available for every platform ever (except the Mac ¬ ¬), so what excuse do you have for not getting it? Here’s the answer: none. God may not strike you down for not buying it, but my agents are everywhere. If you fail to possess the game within the next week or so, I’d stay in public places if I were you.
