Between Good & Excellent (Beyond Good & Evil (PS2))

Member Name: tom1clare

Product:	Beyond Good & Evil (PS2)
Date:	05/07/09 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Jade's camera, lots of smart ideas, voice-acting

Disadvantages: Odd technical hitches, very short, sluggish controls at times

After taking limbless platform hero Rayman as far as his invisible legs would carry him, Michel Ancel devised a new intellectual property in 2003 called Beyond Good & Evil; an adventure game that owes a lot to the likes of Zelda, whilst retaining some of the 3D platformer traits refined in the development of his Rayman series. BG&E is a brief but refreshingly inventive tale, told by lively and unusual personalities, making for a fun and engaging experience while it lasts.

You play as the racially-ambivalent reporter Jade, a now-cult heroine famed for her matching green denim and lipstick combination, initially equipped with nothing more than a big stick and a camera as she gets drawn into a struggle to save those dear to her. She becomes part of a small resistance movement battling ever-increasing numbers of the otherworldly, ghoul-like DomZ creatures and the Alpha Sections, a corrupt militant leadership permeating lies about their success in dealing with the invasion. This David and Goliath formula is well-worn to say the least, but what makes this standout from your average adventure is that Jade's skills as a reporter prove her greatest asset; her camera her greatest weapon, as by taking the necessary snapshots, she helps to win over the hearts and minds of the people of Hillys. That, and her Uncle is a talking pig called Pey'J.

There are several different facets making up Beyond Good & Evil's gameplay. You get to navigate the games island on a hovercraft (this area acts as a hub linking the various locations, similar to how an RPG would use a World Map), while you must carry out a number of tasks and favours for the citizens of Hillys in order to obtain pearls, which are integral to your progression through the game. Add to this a dash of 3D platforming, fighting and a fair bit of stealth and espionage action and you're a little closer to understanding BG&E.

The early stages in particular are excellent, revealing a glimpse of the variety the gameplay has to offer as well as the competence and care that has gone into the games design. Things kick off with a mini-boss fight as a means of allowing the player to acclimatise to the simplistic but exceedingly well-executed battle-system. Then, after assuming control of Jade in her lighthouse home, the role-playing elements come to the fore, giving you the chance to chat with others as a means of getting information and ultimately aiding you in your hunt for pearls. The camera is undoubtedly the best addition to Jade's armoury, and likely one of the best accessories you'll come across in a game. Pressing R1 brings up a first-person, lens-view of the world around you, complete with a zoom function. You are challenged to help assemble a database on Hillys wildlife, and this means photographing the many species found within the game, of which there are literally dozens. They range from the common human variants, to bugs; birds; flora; fish; thought-to-be-extinct bosses and some remarkable though distinctly camera-shy creatures whose image on celluloid fetches quite a sum. The camera is for more than just sight-seeing and species-spotting however, as it also reveals points of interactivity in the game world, giving you useful pointers if you're unsure as to what to do next. Taking a shot of map blueprints found on the walls of certain locations will reward you with a fully-completed, detailed version to view at your leisure from the pause menu, which is a superb touch.

Ironically whilst Jade's camera is such a masterstroke, the one the player must navigate with the right analogue stick is rather less impressive. Third-person perspectives have always created viewpoint problems and, though far from game-breaking, it proves a nuisance from time to time when it decides to correct itself. Graphically, there's a lot to like but also some technical shortcomings that are hard to ignore. The colourful environments look the part and are structurally sound, whilst the cut-scenes appear amazingly sharp and well-defined. The various points of Hillys you get to explore whilst on the hovercraft are nice, particularly the civilian districts that showcase some waterways and a legion of hovercrafts passing by - very evocative, even if the frame-rate stutters a bit during such moments. Bizarrely however, it rather shoots itself in the foot by adopting such an extreme aspect ratio. I played the game on a widescreen television and yet black bars occupied the top and bottom sections of the screen, accounting for almost a third of the picture. On a smaller, non-widescreen TV it's even worse as everything appears squashed and though black borders are not unheard of in games, I've never seen them used to quite this level of excess.

For much of the game, you are accompanied by a companion, something that fits so comfortably that it becomes second nature very quickly. You are able to perform certain tasks such as block-pushing and assisted jumps that would otherwise prove impossible for Jade alone and by pressing triangle in battle, you can summon your partner to perform a special move, usually exposing a weakness in the enemy which, with a bit of smart timing, Jade can follow up with some big damage. Teamwork is a two-way thing of course and in return, you need to keep in mind that your buddies require health on occasion. They're pretty handy in a fight and to be fair, don't get injured all that much either.

Some compromise has been made to the platforming side of Beyond Good & Evil - you can't plunge to your death by falling off ledges as far as I am aware - but it's a lot of fun as Jade still climbs, jumps, rolls and crawls through caves, factories and assembly lines dodging laser-beams, mines, turrets and other traps - it's good to see most of her abilities are put to the test repeatedly during the course of the game and not left forgotten as soon as they've been introduced. There are a handful of puzzles that spice things up nicely too, the best being a mind-boggler towards the end of the game whereby the player must rotate a series of mirrors in order to direct a continuous path of light through several corridors thus opening a door at the end - not dissimilar to efforts later used on a smaller scale in, oddly enough, Resident Evil 4 and 5.

It's fair to say that the first half of the game is a little better than the second, chiefly because there's a better variety of challenges and also because later on BG&E develops an over-reliance on stealth sections. That's not to say they're poor - they're pretty well-integrated in fact - it's just that the game loses a bit of its pace and inventiveness, with dark, militant interiors feeling too prominent. You get the impression that spending long periods pushed up behind cover memorising guard patrol routes is not where the games strengths lie, and these parts feel less than comfortable at times due to the sluggish controls and choppy frame-rate.

Still, from beginning to end you'll be hooked. A good mixture of objectives mean the gameplay rarely feels samey, and the strong cast of characters offer the kind of quirky light-relief you'd expect from Ancel. More surprising is Beyond Good & Evil's ability to evoke emotional highs and lows in the player, something that lends the decent finale some real gravitas. Kudos must also go to Ubi-Soft for making sure the voice-dubbing is up to scratch as well, as that always helps.

The challenge presented is relatively gentle, with the large stock of health items making some of the potentially trickier bosses more bearable. Despite a modest array of mini-games and the prospect of obtaining all the photographs and pearls the game has to offer, it can't disguise its greatest weakness - a serious lack of longevity. It can be completed in less than 12 hours; just over half as long as Psychonauts and way short of the 40 hours you can expect to get from Okami. But whilst these two titles are better games, you should definitely give Beyond Good & Evil a try, as such a dynamic combination of fun and inventiveness deserves to be recognised.

Summary: An original and enjoyable adventure that needed a touch more content