Both the game's cover and its mechanics make great job integrating the camera into their designs.
Everyone knows about BG&E by now, critically praised yet criminally undersold, people have been clamoring for a sequel yet were only rewarded with a prequel. But I digress, often compared to The Legend of Zelda, Beyond Good & Evil is an adventure game that's only similar in the genre but not in anything else.You play as Jade, a reporter turned Resistance member in a futuristic world, inhabited by humans and anthropomorphic animal aliens, that's been suffering the invasion of the Domz while the valiant Alpha forces protect the populace. Or do they? That's Jade's job to find out. The story isn't anything to write home about, but what really deserves praise is the entire world of Beyond Good & Evil. There're a lot of different alien species to find, and photograph, a lot of different, colorful and appealing locales to visit and the game does an spectacular job of setting the mood with cartoony, yet lovingly built graphics and a top-notch soundtrack that gives every area its own personality. Beyond Good & Evil's world is an amazing place to visit.
Wonder if she wears green because she's called Jade or if she's called Jade because she wears gree!
Most of the adventure is confined to a few islands and zones, and you travel most of the world by way of your Hovercraft. Your hovercraft must be upgraded in order to gain the ability to land lock-shots and jump and thus get to new areas, later in the game you'll also get a spaceship. Both vehicles feel great to control and I think it would've been amazing to add more focus to both of them. Most of the not-so optional content is gated behind naval and spatial exploration, but still...That only holds true for world exploration, since the game features a single big town and three different 'dungeon's that are explored on foot. Jade's able to crawl, dash, fight with her staff, shoot discs(Must be acquired), jump automatically and take photos with her camera. One of the surprisingly best features in the game is taking pictures, you're award money for photographing different species of bio-organisms, and while it sounds dumb, it grew addicting, so much so that when I fought new alien species I had to make it my job to sneak in a picture. Jade will be accompanied by a friendly NPC throughout most of her adventure, and they must be used on a few context-sensitive obstacles that only they can clear. There's a nasty 'Missing Partner' bug, luckily I didn't come across it, but it can make the entire game unwinnable, so be sure to
Hit their green tanks, that's their Achilles' heel!
Combat is the area in which the game suffers the most, being repetitive, boring and kinda lame. When you fight enemies, Jade will automatically target her nearest enemy, and she can dodge with Square or attack with X. Many times I dodged an attack and then pressed X only to have Jade hit thin air, even though I was aiming with the left stick against my enemy. It's particularly boring since you'll be fighting Alpha forces most of the times, and their shields forces you to wait until they try to attack with their hammer and only then can you counter attack. Alien species are a bit more fun since you don't need to be on the defensive, but after a short while you'll have seen every single enemy type, and combat never evolves.There're also a few stealth sections, some you can go in guns ablazing. others implement a few turrets that instantly kill you if you are spotted by guards to make them mandatory. Honestly, there were few times in which there was more than a single correct 'route' to solve them, but I felt pretty proud of myself on the few occasions I managed to exploit the AI and kill every guard on those mandatory sections, even if it took a couple of retries.
You can hog all Health upgrades if you want, death is a slap in the wrist after all.
In order to upgrade your Hovercraft you will need to collect Pearls. While you'll be gifted a few, the rest must be found. The problem is... upgrades are mandatory to progress the plot. I regularly dabbled in side-content, because it was fun, so I was never in want of pearls... until I got to the end game and you're demanded a whopping 50 pearls in order to continue. It sounds worse than it really is since you can get a bunch of pearls from a few choice sidequests, but it's still kinda crappy. And I understand why they did it, without the padding the game would've been really short, but this sort of grinding cheapens the overall experience. And I was having fun fulfilling all sidequests, some which can be relatively lengthy, and puzzles, but some of that fun is lost when you're doing it because you're required to proceed instead of being allowed to do it if you want.Lastly, the game doesn't perform very well on the PS2, the framerate frequently tanks, although not to an overly annoying degree. That said, the game runs poorly on certain PS2 slims, in my case I got the common audio bugs that make certain sounds loop until the game loads another area, and also had trouble loading The Crypt while close to the end, it froze twice before it finally loaded the next scene. But I've heard that the game won't even run on certain models, which definitely sucks.
You can shoot disks on their green tasks to distract them and stealthily go past guards... or finish them off with a swift kick.
Beyond Good & Evil is a pretty good game, but even laying aside all the technical issues present with the PS2 port it can't be denied that combat is pretty poor and lackluster, and the forced grind for pearls kinda puts a damper on an otherwise enjoyable adventure. The game could've also expanded on the vehicle exploration aspect on the game, since controlling vehicles was sorta fun. In the end, I wouldn't necessarily call it a classic or an underrated game, but it's definitely worth a look.7.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment