 Malik
(4/25/04)
Beyond Good and Evil (XBox)
Ubi Soft
Beyond Good and Evil was
released surprisingly to almost no notice last year.
Considering the rave reviews from the more commercial magazines and
sites, and how this game came from Ubi, who could do no wrong lately
(heard of Price of Persia? Splinter Cell?), plus most
convincingly of all, a quick price drop to $20, I knew I had to give
in and check out BG&E.
Actually, the real reason I
picked up this so easily forgotten game is quite simpler...no good
games have been released on any of the consoles since around
February (actually I'd say January since personally I think FF:CC
was over-rated). So, either I could play Xenogears once again
(I only play through Xenogears once ever 4 to 6 months...) or I try
out something new (as in pick up an old game I overlooked, at the
strong risk of throwing another $20 down the drain). So I
tried BG&E.
Story
Well, BG&E starts of rather
abruptly. In fact, when I game first started, I was presented
with not only a lack of reason to play, but also a lack of
understanding of what the hell I was doing. Let me elaborate;
when you start the game, you are quickly introduced a some female
character (according to the instructions, assuming you glanced at
them, this would be you and your name would be Jade) who is on some
planet and some asteroid-type-things falling from space (called
"The Domz") are "attacking". Then you're
in a fight (luckily, they keep the story feeling realistic by not
giving you a tutorial...BTW: you have 2 heart containers...the game
calls them AP...so you have a 50/50 chance of dying really
soon). Then you're falling down a hole and are fighting a
boss.
Thank you Ubi for waking up
your programmers after the boss fight and telling them to give the
player something to work with...after all of that teh gay confusion,
including meeting a pig-man named Pey-j (pronounced
"Page"), you soon are given a proper introduction to the
game (why didn't they do that in the first place and give you the
two fight scenes SECOND?). So, if you can bare with about 15
minutes of confusion, things will definitely pick up.
Ok, that issue with the story
aside, things get rather interesting rather quickly. To give
the general idea, you are an orphan in her late teens/early twenties
who gets by in life as a freelance photographer, as she and her
adoptive uncle (Pey-j, the pig-man) look over an island full of
orphans (who's parents died in the Domz attacks). Speaking of
which, the Domz are a sorta twisted mutant style alien life which
seems to more or less corrupt other life forms and bring them into
the collective existence of the Domz (for you Star Trek geeks, think
an organic Borg). Well, to make ends meet (to pay your
electric bill so you can put up defenses to save the kiddies from
Domz attacks), you take an assignment for the National Science
Foundation to photograph all the animal life of Hillys (the planet
you be chillin' on) before anything dies out from the Domz
invasion. Plus you get an unusual extra mission to meet with
an mysterious name on an eerily named island off in the middle of
nowhere.
From there, the story only
picks up more and more, constantly throwing answers to old questions
at you and bringing up new intriguing questions and plot twists with
almost every step you take; everything from mysterious alliances
between government agencies and evil aliens, to secret underground
resistance sectors tied in to other sectors of the government.
A good way to explain this story is too say a cross between a Zelda
game and Metal Gear Solid.
Game Play
Just like I said to describe
the story, I'd say the game plays a lot like a cross between Metal
Gear Solid and Zelda (the Wind Waker to be precise). A large
part of the game focuses on exploration and dialogue with commoners,
merchants, and so forth in a standard Zelda style (ever notice how
Zelda's world of Hyrule sounds slightly similar to Hillys).
However, once you enter a dungeon (...not counting the first, aka
the training, dungeon), which usually consist of factories,
secret alien processing centers, etc, stealth and espionage are you
best friends.
In the primary part of the
game, you are given a fantasy setting with a wonderfully exotic and
exciting world to explore. As you explore the common areas of
Hillys, all you really see are very friendly commoners, exotic
merchants with wonderful items to behold, abrupt yet protective
soldiers who enforce the law, etc...you should know all of this from
any Zelda game (and if you haven't played a single Zelda game
ever...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!!?). In fact, the
controls give you all the abilities of a standard Zelda game.
You can swing your stick (just like a sword) or hold the button to
charge a super attack, you can roll/dive, you can press yourself
flat against walls, you collect heart containers (now call AP),
money, you buy more heart containers...as far as you'll be
concerned, until you get to the second dungeon, you're playing a
more maturely oriented version of Zelda (it's a darker world filled
with conspiracies...hence, "more maturely oriented"...).
However, once you enter the
second dungeon, you are brought into a whole new world of game play
as a Zelda style world is given the intense qualities of a Splinter
Cell or Metal Gear Solid. Gigantic guards are found on every
corner patrolling for intruders...aka YOU...Due to Jade wielding the
poorly chosen stick (as opposed to a assault riffle or an axe), you
are given two ways to deal with the guards; Instead of acting
more like I tend to with Metal Gear Solid (kill as many guards as
possible until you can find a hiding spot, and then resume the
carnage), you must either sneak by all the guards (this is presented
in a puzzle like fashion, as the guards move and patrol in very
strict patterns), or you will need to assault the guards.
However, when you assault a guard, you are too weak to tackle more
than one at a time (if there are more than one, while you tackle the
first, the second will come up behind you and lay you out with an
instant kill...they have high-tech energy weapons and you have the
all mighty armor known as "clothes"...seriously, this is
not a cheap kill since you are warned constantly...FIGHT ONLY ONE AT
A TIME), so this option is present only in a few rarer
situations. So usually it comes down to moving against walls,
ducking around corners, rolling across open areas, and most of all,
being as quiet as possible as you try as hard as possible to make
noises far away from yourself (you are eventually given a gun that
is essentially no more than a noise-maker than can press switches).
While these two game play
formats have been done to death, when they are put together in this
level of interaction, it truly is a breath of fresh air on the
currently stale geek world. Especially when the controls are
done this well. The buttons react when you want, how you
want...every time. Even the camera controls (with only a
couple small exceptions) how one would expect (by "expect"
I mean two things...one, the camera controls are really
responsive...two, no 3D game has a perfect camera, so there will be
some problems...I simply won't name them all since to say a game is
3D is to say that the camera has problems...it's just a matter of
how many problems...BG&E has very few).
Fortunately, for the geek on
the run (or the working class geek), you are given plenty of opportunities
to save your game. In fact, I've found that if you play with
moderate skill, you should hit the next save opportunity within
about 20 minutes of the last save. This is a great relief to
me since I usually only have an hour or so I can play games at any
given time.
However, after taking into fact
that the game is so friendly with saves and offers such a provocative
style of game play, there has to be something done wrong...and wrong
is the only way to describe the most teh gay aspect of 3D
games. Every 3D action/adventure game has to throw in
collecting. In BG&E, you have certain hovercraft parts you
must purchase to unlock the next part of the game (be it jump
boosters, advanced weaponry, or rockets to take you to space).
To purchase these parts, you have to use Pearls as your
currency. These pearls are different from your standard money
(credits), and are quite rare. In order to acquire pearls, you
pretty much have to do what you would do to acquire Shines on Mario
Sunshine, or stars on Mario 64. In other words, you find some
automatically (but not enough to go on in the game, without...) and
some bonus missions, such as racing (which starts easy, but ends up
insanely difficult, taking enough pictures of the native animals of
Hillys (1 Pearl/8 unique pictures), explore hidden areas, etc.
This is all well and good to encourage the player to explore and
play extra areas of the game (the same way it's done on all other 3D
games), but collecting is required to fully experience the
game...thus, if you don't have too much time to throw away, you are
simply going to miss certain aspects of the game due to wanting to
play for fun and not labor away at collecting...and if you do like
collecting in action/adventure games, then all I can say is that I
pity you...
The only other possible problem
I can think of with the game play is that BG&E tends to be unbalanced
in difficulty. When you try a bonus game (such as a race), you
will throw the control at the ground, swear, scream...if you play
bonus missions around a significant other...just don't...but when
you're playing the normal game segments, you are given almost too
little of a challenge. The only part of the difficulty that is
actually done perfectly is the matter of life and death. When
you die (and you will...enough to keep you challenged, but not
enough to piss you off too much), you simply come back to life at
the beginning of the current scene (if the scene was you sneaking
past some guard, you'll respawn in the previous room)...bravo, Ubi...bravo.
Visuals
Usually, for me, a games
visuals mean next to nothing to the overall experience. I
mean, if a game is fun, what does it matter if the bump-mapping is
good, or the mode-7 (I just went old school on all your arses) is
breath-taking. Unless the visuals take away from the
experience (like in FFX...ummm, post-apocalyptic world that looks
like a brochure for a tropical vacation...yeah...that fits the mood
of the game...), I'll still have fun with modest graphics.
However, BG&E is one of those rare experiences for me that the
visuals actually added to the game.
In BG&E, everything is
given that animated look that does more than just give some lame
innovative hype like with Zelda:WW. The animation is so smooth
and detailed that it makes one feel like they are actually playing
an animated movie. However, unlike FFX, the game play gives
the feeling that you're in control of the movie instead of just
watching it. Each movement made by Jade is not fully in your
control, but also fully animated. Personally, I don't think
this game can be described (in terms of visuals) outside of actually
seeing it in action; so, I'll just leave it at this; BG&E is
perfectly animated to the level of detail one would see in a major
movie release.
Despite the perfection of these
visuals, I do have one complaint. It is minor, but I feel I
must say it. This game is really green. I mean the whole
world is filled with green, the lighting in the various dungeons is
usually green, the energy shields sometimes used by various
characters are green...quite frankly, with this level of detail and
animation, I'd prefer to see the game in more...how to put it...full
color. The visuals are almost wasted by using so little of the
other colors. However, at least I can say that this effect
does something that the bright visuals of a game like FFX tends to
neglect; it shows that the world is in a sickly state. So, I
guess it does fulfill it's purpose, but still...so much green...
Sound
The voice acting is surprisingly
fresh and skillfully accomplished. Usually my biggest complain
about audio in games tends to be about the usually stale and dull
voice acting. However, the acting in BG&E give a good deal
of flavor to the characters. Jade has that naive sound in her
voice that helps the player see how naive she is when the story
begins. As the game progresses, she tends to sound more
forceful and in charge, thus allowing the voice acting to actually
show character development. On top of that, you have such
interesting uses of accents to give additional flavor to the
game. You computer is given a Latin inspired accent, which
adds to the entertainment of hearing something as mundane as an item
description. Pey-j sounds bitter and grumpy, which is good
since he's a bitter old mechanic. The examples go on and on.
As for the actual sound
effects, they are everything one would hope for. There's
nothing that really stands out as unique, but then again,
considering the quality of sound effects from Ubi Soft games lately,
this is not a bad thing. After all, if nothing's wrong, why
mess with it?
Last of all is the music.
Once again, there's nothing bad I could say about BG&E
audio-wise. The music fits the mood of the game. If your
in an exploration type of moment, then you will hardly notice any
background music, but one the shit hits the fan, the music will
speed up, get loud, and get your adrenaline pumping.
Conclusion
After playing a good 60%
through the game (by my estimates), I think it's safe to say this is
a keeper. I have had nothing bad in terms of playing this game
except for the annoying collecting aspects (which every adventure
game has to have...so, how could I really complain about BG&E as
much as complain about the genre as a whole?) and the uneven
difficulty on the side quests. If it weren't for this
difficulty issue, I'd give BG&E a higher score, but as it goes, I
have to give BG&E a 8.75/10.
Malik
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