Beyond Good & Evil (2003)

This is a game with a lot of potential. Not only in its ambition, both in terms of game design and narrative, but also in its world building. You can tell Beyond Good and Evil was a game built on on compromises and cut content. Due likely in part to a combination of budget and hardware limitations. You can tell they wanted a space odyssey game with a large focus on exploration. This game has some elements of that, but it all feels under cooked.

For example, at the last stretch of the game you get the ability to fly and even enter the atmosphere. But at this phase of the game, you can explore a volcano and fly straight to the moon, where all you can do there is enter the final dungeon... In general, I did enjoy cruising around on the hovercraft, but there really isn't that much to do on the over-world. You can enter optional caves for challenges, which are fun, but for the most part it doesn't feel too different from Hyrule in Ocarina of Time.

While I do feel characters are charming, mostly Pey'j to be honest, none of them are particularly complex. Jade, in particular, I honestly found to be bland and kind of boring. She's a fairly generic protagonist, with only her penchant for photography being the only real interesting thing about her. Double H does feel unique and interesting though as another companion. Still, from a gameplay standpoint, both Pey'j and HH are essentially the same. They have different moves, but these moves are functionally the same thing. This companion system certainly had potential. It would have been cool to have something similar to Paper Mario, where companions had actually uniquely functional skills you had to swap between to solve puzzles. But nope, instead you run across a door you can't open, then either Pey'j or HH opens it with their ability. That's it. Pretty lame and unimaginative to be honest.

In general, puzzles aren't really complex. You push blocks around, you use a companion to "open" a locked door, or you smack a device to temporarily open a path you need to b-line to. That's honestly kind of the extent of "puzzles." The game is more focused on exploration, and it does do this well. This is helped by the imaginative world building and great art direction that honestly still ages well today. I think the game still looks good in spite of being over 20 years old.

I did like the photography mechanics. There's nothing particularly deep, but it did give flavor to the character, where there was otherwise none. The game does make journalism a huge part of the narrative as well. Where the game feels the most lackluster and half-baked is with the combat and stealth sections. Combat isn't good... you mindlessly smash a button to hit and another to dodge. You can hold down the attack button for a charged attack, but this is only relevant for the first fight in the game, and never comes up again... Sadly the game forces a lot of combat and I really think it's detrimental to the game. The stealth is also half-baked where detection feels inconsistent and knocking out guards is clunky. Not to mention how quickly they forget they just saw you and go right back to their patrols. This makes the stealth sections honestly feel more tedious than fun.

The plot itself is fine from a broad stroke standpoint, but the smaller details all feel rushed and half baked. It's cool to be part of a revolution to overthrow a totalitarian police state, but the way the revolution plays out feels so rushed. The biggest culprit of this is with the final assault on the villains moon base. You take a few pictures to complete the main quest, and then within 5 minutes you have an entire space fleet of rebels supporting you. This feels sloppy, given how the game presents space flight as a very rare and expensive thing. So how did an entire fleet of rebels mobilize in 5 minutes and get to the moon after a news report is released? Maybe this could have played better if the game had more time to flesh out it's narrative? Instead it all just happens so quickly and feels both rushed and unbelievable.

Then there's the forced pearl collectathon. I did find the challenges of getting pearls to be fun, but what's ultimately kind of frustrating about it and half-baked is how these pearls are required for upgrades to your vehicle in order to progress. So it's not optional, but the design of the challenges make them feel like optional challenges, if that makes any sense. There isn't a whole lot to talk about with the pearl upgrades. It's a fairly linear progression system, with some upgrades just not being available at all until you progress the plot enough.

In conclusion, I understand why this was a cult classic. It had a lot of potential, but due to hardware and budgetary restrictions, it didn't reach it's desired ambition. This naturally has created a lot of hype around BGE2, which at this point will likely never get released, or if it does, it will be hugely disappointing. Who knows, maybe it will release before Star Citizen and do everything that game promises. I doubt it.

I played the remastered version on the Xbox series S. I own this game also on Steam.

This is one of those games that I have had on my list to play for probably a decade or two. I remember it getting exceptionally high praise when it came out and it just never made its way onto my GameCube at the time and then just this sort of lingered in the background as a game I want to play someday for many years. When the fully remastered version came out earlier this year, I decided to finally pull the trigger.

On one hand, I totally get why people love this game. The characters are really interesting, the world is really well thought out and enjoyable to explore, the writing and music and voice acting are really well done. The story seems interesting and unique.

On the other hand, I just can’t get past some of the gameplay mechanic issues and the very stealth heavy areas that I have needed to navigate in at least the early part of the games. The combat is very clunky and so is the movement, which is a problem when you are trying to carefully navigate sections.

Overall, I made it I think about 30 to 40% of the way through the game, but in the end got pulled away to other games and I’m not sure if I will actually come back and finish this. I’m just not having enough fun with it to justify the time at this point, though I intellectually understand that this is a really well regarded game that I probably should finish at some point.

One of my favourite games of all time.

Whatever platform you play this game on, the core gameplay, visuals and especially story are wonderful. The HD version doesn't add a great deal of fidelity or quality to the visuals, but they were honestly pretty stunning even for 6th gen consoles, so it doesn't look massively outdated by any means. The worst parts are the slightly stiff facial animations, which would've taken much more than a remastering to fix, and aren't really a huge issue.

Without going too much into plot spoilers - this is a fantastic tale of media propaganda silencing resistance, alien invasion and working class revolution.

Gameplay revolves around exploring the small but secrets filled world of 'Hillys' which is a gorgeous waterscape with small islands and structures that form the imposing albeit limited metropolitan life of the area. Seriously I cannot stress enough how good the water looks in even the base version of this game, it mesmerized me.

There is also fairly mediocre combat - which thankfully is not a cornerstone of the game. You will need to know how to fight, however the core quests are structured that save for specific events and bosses, fights will only usually occur if you fail in the games main gameplay gimmick - the stealth.

As your mission is to infiltrate the enemies buildings of operations to uncover and expose what they are doing to the people of Hillys - you are required to do a lot of sneaking and careful traversing of the environments to get to your destination without being seen. The enemy guards are intimidating to the point that when I was a child I could not get past these enemies, and the mere thought of trying was shitting me up - backed up by the fact that while they are fightable, they are stronger than anything else in the game, and are vulnerable for a very specific window. It is perfectly possible to kill them, and in some situations that may be your only option - but for the most part you'll want to avoid direct confrontation at all costs.

So how does the movement control? It's nothing exceptional, but it is perfectly functional. I rarely had a moment where I was caught because of controller difficulties - it was always my own misjudgement, or timing error that messed it up for me. You can run smoothly, crouch, hide up against walls, look around, dive, and after a point even fire gyro discs at guards with their backs turned to incapacitate them before they can see you.

So why do I like this game so much? The combat is average, the movement is good but nothing stand-out. Well I think it's between the themes of propaganda and fighting back against your oppressors, and the atmosphere and ambience of the game. There are very few music tracks that stand out for me in the game - the ones there are being limited mostly the mini games, boss fights, and the Akuda bar. These are all good - but even without them the soundscapes, particularly in the stealth section - with discordant minor piano sound effects, as well as industrial ambience - that heart shattering thud whenever anyone spots you, and the tense music when they're searching for you and you're wondering if your hiding place is good enough? The death noise - an ominous drone sounding nothing like anything tangible, but instilling a feeling of dread in you every time it happens which makes you generally terrified of it, despite the game having infinite lives and fairly generous checkpoints.

If you're just playing through the main campaign, this is a fairly short game for what it is. I think I sank about 10 hours into it 100%ing everything. I reckon you could pull off a glitchless run in 6-7 hours on your first attempt if you're used to stealth adventure games. But those few hours really flesh out the world - and the few side quests there are, especially searching for all the different species that inhabit the planet to take photos of for money - involving some very well hidden ones where you have to solve little puzzles to get a good picture of, or terrifying monsters that you have to snap quickly before they destroy you, but also before you kill them. It's so much fun to do and really highlights how much care went into this tiny world that a collection of maybe 5 key locations and the odd cave feels like a whole planet.

There's so many little details I love in this game too. I adore how your main tool in this game is your camera. You have a staff to defend yourself, and a gyro disc launcher to aid you in stealth sections/puzzles. But the camera is what you will spend most of your time using. Taking pictures of animals, evidence, maps, computers to decode, etc. You do fight, and there is a satisfying final boss which tests your combat and reflexes. But you are primarily a spy/journalist, and that reflects massively in the gameplay.

Also I like how you can opt to sign up to other mailing lists in game, so that as you uncover more of the conspiracy, you get mailing alerts from the enemy, spreading propaganda and decrying you as terrorists who are aiding in the destruction of the people. It's a nice little touch.

Also as a massive furry I adore how many different species of anthropomorphic humanoids there are.

When I first bought this game, I was driven to do so as an ad for it featured in the back of the game manual for Prince of Persia Sands Of Time (another one of my favourite games) and I really liked the colour scheme, art style, and tbh, it's a cool title. Doesn't particularly mean anything, but it sounds cool.

Unfortunately, from how critically acclaimed yet low in sales it was, it seems like that's one of the only ways they pushed this game. It was unknown for the longest time, a cult classic. So when I heard that it was getting an HD remaster for 7th gen consoles, I was hyped that it had a second chance.

That being said; The original is marginally better than the HD release - but the HD release is far from unplayable either and possibly worth it for convenience alone.

ACTION-ADVENTURE - Play as Jade and uncover the truth behind the DomZ attacks and the government force known as the Alpha Sections.

PROS:

++ Music & soundtrack. The music in this game SLAPS. Within the first five minutes, the music was able to capture my attention. And the music continued to capture me throughout the game's runtime; the energetic music, the melancholic music, and everything in-between.

++ Blend of gameplay. The game never felt like it dragged because there were so many different gameplay elements. There are simple platforming and puzzle sections. There is combat here and there, and while it is quite basic, it's quite enjoyable because of how nimble and acrobatic Jade moves. There are stealth sections (which were my least favourite). There are vehicle sections (racing and combat). And there is also the photography aspect which gave me a good reason to slow down and appreciate the world that they had created.

++ Charming. Jade, Pey'j, Double H, and all the other characters were quite loveable and voice-acted well enough. The character designs and the art style was also quite unique and I liked it a lot! And the small world they created was filled with locations that had tons of personality.

++ Narrative. The story wasn't anything too complex, but I cared for the characters (mainly Jade and Pey'j) and found the overall plot to be interesting. There were also one or two emotional moments that I quite liked.

CONS:

-- Camera. I don't know if this would have been a big issue with a controller, but I really struggled with the camera while using keyboard & mouse. I also found it annoying that the camera would switch from free to fixed angles frequently. Another issue was how zoomed-in the view was. It was hard to know what was happening around Jade because it was soo zoomed-in to her. And while using the hovercraft, you can only move the camera around when not moving which was a bit bothersome.

-- Stealth sections. It was a minor gripe, but I didn't like the stealth sections in the game, and I'm usually a fan of stealth. The main issue was that the sightlines of the enemy guards was inconsistent.

-- Companion AI. Minor gripe, but my companions stopped following me from time to time and got stuck on objects or the environment.

-- Collecting pearls. Getting the pearls was quite varied and fun, but the game often required the player to collect a certain amount in order to update the hovercraft and progress. While this did give the player a reason to explore the world, I think it slightly affected the pacing of the story.

Intro

In BG&E you walk around talking to people, picking stuff up, taking photos and fighting enemies.

Playtime: 44 minutes

The Good

• Neat worldbuilding.
• Looks pretty good for a 2003 game.
• Nice dialogue.

The Bad

• Combat sucks.
• Really weird controls. E.g. confirming isn't done with Enter but instead uses Left Mouse. Except when it uses Space. What?

The Ugly

• Unskippable cutscenes. Some are very long and don't auto-pause when they're done.
• They fucking pause when you Alt-Tab.
• The second worst saving system i've ever seen - checkpoints plus an obnoxious menu.
• Terrible camera that is really confusing sometimes.

Conclusion

I died when fighting the flying worm thing near the garage. When the unskippable cutscene started playing again i realised i was done with it and Alt+F4-ed. I like the setting and interactions but not enough to put up with that. There isn't even a "save and quit" option.

What a wordy name for a game...

Now that I got that random thought out of my head, let's just say that this is a good game. Not great, but good. Maybe I have been affected by all the hype and nostalgia filled fans or something, but I was expecting a little more. Don't get me wrong, the game is very charming. Most of all, it is sharp: the dialogue is on point and it has many small details that really make a big difference. I loved the pictures mechanic, since I would really enjoy to do that in real life (I mean taking wildlife pictures). One of the things that almost made me go insane was the camera controls! It was infuriating! I don't know if it was a problem that happened with the PS3 version, but that was almost unbearable. The spaceship camera was also inverted, so every time I went from the ship to the hovercraft, I had to change the camera setting in the options menu. Unnecessary. Still, a good, solid game. I would like to see what they make with this Universe in the second game, if it ever comes out. Although I am a little worried, because the trailers have a complete different feeling from the original...

It's not a great look to spend your review of a game talking about the sequel that has been repeatedly teased/cancelled/restarted for the better part of 20 years, but Beyond Good and Evil is such a specific odd duck, there's really no way around it. Released back in 2003, BG&E received positive reviews for being a heartfelt, entertaining genre-hopper of a game that introduced us to a promising new universe. It had people pretty excited, but If you look at the game objectively, there isn't a ton to chew on. It's a brief game that earned a lot of goodwill due to its likable photographer protagonist Jade and an amiably cartoonish sci-fi visual style which featured humans, animals and other weird creatures living in harmony. It had a kind of underdog spirit that gave it a certain amount of "cred" as a game that a lot of people slept on but is actually quite good. As time has moved on and demand for a sequel grew, that sentiment reached a sort of mythological level as multiple starts and stops plagued the floundering follow-up's development. All the while, BG&E stayed in the conversation as a great game that really REALLY needed a sequel. I would go so far as to say this game has now been dramatically overrated by the games media, which simply refused to let it just drift off to the great beyond.

And now here we are. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is STILL in development, re-revealed to much excitement at E3 2017. The CG trailer that was shown was a banger, too. Really exciting stuff just oozing with character. And then silence. Word on the street now is that the game is some massive MMO and there's an animated series in the works with Netflix? Also, they wanted artists to work on the game for free through some bizarre crowd-sourcing campaign? It's just a mess. Here's hoping the sequel to Beyond Good and Evil, a modest little game with a lot of heart from 3(!) generations ago, can circumvent decades of game design evolution, explode our expectations, be the massive hit that we all want it to be, and make this review look really outdated. Until then, I'm not going to dwell on it.

I just played this game for the first time, and I definitely understand why it has its fans, it's a very good game, but while some aspects have aged well, others are really quite obnoxious from a modern perspective. Camera issues, lack of enemy lock, dungeons overly reliant on fairly mediocre stealth sections and a sudden and unexpected immense peak of difficulty at the very end, even though 98% of the game was easy to moderately difficult. Thankfully I had seen warnings and had bought tons of health packs, but ouch if you didn't and had to go back to a previous save to buy them.

The good things are that it's a fun world to explore, with good characters and it's a solid Zelda-like.

What can I say? I love the style of the game (think ps2 format). Been meaning to play this one for a long time and I finally did. It deserves the praise it gets. It really does. Granted the controls are clunky AF. I highly suggest playing this on a platform that allows a controller. Trust me. The characters are all great meaning you will remember them all. Hard to not like any of them. The story is well........cool and lame at the same time.

now the game did get on my nerves with all the freaking backtracking and that ending boss....I almost broke my controller had me raging all while forcing me to question my life choices.

But other than that Ubisoft did a super job with this one. and I can see why it well-loved and a classic.

(but that ending tho took me three days -_-)

A great game although time has not been the kindest to it.

Beyond Good and Evil is an action adventure game with a 3rd person view. You play as Jade - a reporter picking up work for a resistance group in order to discover alien/government conspiracy in a beautifully crafted world inhabited by all kind of creatures.

Starting of with bad to get it out of the way. Configuring graphics was a nightmare in order to run it smoothly and not have flicker but it is possible. No gamepad support although the game almost screams for it. The settings for subtitles were never saved so had to on each lunch set them manually - annoying to say the least. Camera work leaves a lot to desire - especially in tighter spots where it for no apparent reason switches from 3rd person view to fixed angle.

Apart from that - a masterpiece - though at least a star comes from nostalgia related to this game. Played it at least twice though this is my first time finishing it.

The visuals are what they are. A little outdated but still not that bad looking. However the world is so unique and great that it's easy to forget the age of the game. And there's this wonderful atmosphere around it that you just immerse yourself in it.

Game play wise it's a little bit of everything. Mostly it's exploration - sneaking into various places in order to take some photos and create a report. There's a little bit of combat but it's not the best part of the game. There are races in hovercraft and a couple of odd places to collect pearls which are essential to complete the game.

Audio wise it's really well voiced and every voice fits the character spot on. The music is varied and fits the locations really well.

The story is intriguing and well written. It's not really aimed at mature audience - but I really enjoyed it throughout. With plenty of stand out characters it just makes sense and keeps you interested towards the end.

It's also not hand holding you through entire game and figuring stuff on your own is that more rewarding.

Overall I love this game. Mostly for the atmosphere I think. But there's just some magic around it that makes it really stand out and worth playing even in this day and age - as long as you can get pass the technical difficulties.

So this is the first title I finished this year, and it seems that 2017 is off to a great start. Beyond Good & Evil is a fun and varied action adventure with racing and stealth elements. It tells a great story set in an original gameworld full of quirky, likeable, but refreshingly non-clichéd characters, and features one of the most kick-ass female protagonists I've seen.

The setting remixes common tropes in an interesting fashion : A tranquil, maritime planet far away from Earth, where people and humanoid animals of different cultures live peacefully together, has come under attack from an evil outside force (the D.O.M.Z.) that devastates the land, abducts its people and would long have taken over if it wasn't for the "Alpha Sections", the special forces that protect and defend the population...or so they claim... In the midst of this conflict, you play as Jade, a young photojournalist, whose job it will become to investigate and expose what is really going on. Jade and her "uncle" Pey'j, a tinkering two-legged pig with a passion for motors, also happen to run an asylum for children whose parents have been abducted, so for them, the struggle is close and personal right from the start. Also, Jade has many friends around town, and the game does a great job contrasting their laid-back friendliness with the quasi-totalitarian overlordship of the Alpha Sections... And so, before you know it, you start to forget that you're playing a game and start to actually care about fictional people and their relationships, and I found this to be the game's greatest strength.

The well-written dialogue, lovely character art, expressive animations and catchy tunes all support this feeling of immersion. Gameplay-wise, Beyond Good & Evil was fun, but not revolutionary. The difficulty level is quite low -- not that I didn't still manage to suck in some sections -- so I suspect it was designed with younger players in mind. The game's area is relatively small, but it can be freely explored, with a number of optional side missions to make it worthwhile. For example, as a photojournalist, Jade is tasked with taking an inventory of the animals alive on the planet, and this makes for some engaging (and sometimes exasperating) non-bloody hunting. She can also enter a string of races with her little hoverboat, which were fun and thankfully easy to win. I generally liked how much variety there was in the gameplay -- stealth, platforming, combat and puzzles were all present. My favourite thing to do, however, was hoverboating on the open sea, which conveyed an awesome feeling of freedom after the more confined spaces inside buildings.

The game's few flaws are to be found in the technical department, most notably in the controls: Since it was originally designed for consoles, the directional buttons don't move you relative to where your character is facing, but Pac-Man style -- left is always left, up is always up. I found this very hard to get used to in a 3D PC game. Also, the camera is supposed to adjust automatically but sometimes just doesn't, so you can't always quite see where you're going. And lastly, one sidekick you get later in the game has a really annoying habit of standing in your way. None of this detracted too much from my overall enjoyment, however. I ended up playing the entire game twice (once in French, once in Dutch, since the game makes it super-easy to switch languages -- bonus points for that!). The second time around, I chased down every last collectible it had to offer, and I definitely don't regret the time spent on this. So, I suppose I'm officially a fan of this cult classic now, and find myself looking forward to the next installment.