Beyond Good & Evil

"Zelda this is not..."

Beyond Good and Evil is a game that showed quite a lot of promise, but fell quite short of being a good game. Some people compared it to the Zelda series, but IMHO Beyond Good and Evil (BGE) can hardly match the scale and immersiveness of ANY of the Zelda series.

The story of BGE is set on the planet of Hillys, where a young (and pretty cute) girl named Jade stays in a lighthouse with her uncle Pey'j (he's a pig, don't ask) and some orphans who have lost their parents to the DomZ, a bunch of aliens who have attacked Hillys. The story unfolds as Jade fights to protect her home with the aid of her uncle Pey'j, and she is soon somehow involved in the mysterious IRIS rebel organisation. She then soon discovers that the Alpha Sections that have protected Hillys from the DomZ are not who people think they are, and her adventures will provide... well... not very startling revelations...

This is a platform-esque game, and it incorporates many different gaming elements such as monster-whacking, puzzle-solving, ship-piloting, stealth, and photography.

Yep, photography is an integral part of this game. You see, Jade has to take pictures of animals for some science centre that wants to catalogue the creatures on the planet. This is one of the best ways to earn lots of cash in the game (wish real-life was this easy), but later on your camera becomes critical to some 'journalism' as you uncover and reveal the mystery of the DomZ.

Most of the action take place inside enemy bases or dungeons. In there are monsters to whack, and plenty of switch-throwing, block-pushing, trap-dodging puzzles compulsory in a platform game. Sometimes, your battles and problem solving will involve your secondary character, Pey'j, who will help you push buttons or blocks, or does a special attack with just the push of the triangle button. You also get to pilot a hovercraft (later a spaceship) and go into races, chase down looters, and blow those pesky DomZ into little kibbles. The later stages will involve plenty of stealth action, but those are relatively easy compared to the likes of... oh, say... Splinter Cell.

The transition from each different gameplay element is smooth and requires little effort for the average gamer to adjust from one mode to the other. From stealth, to combat to hovercraft-riding to photography, all these elements are integrated seamlessly into one another. Unfortunately, the difficulty level does not seem to increase. Just a few more guards looking the wrong way, slightly more traps to dodge, not very complicated puzzles, yawn-inducing monsters, and even the boss battles can be over and done with in a few minutes.

Which is a shame because the game showed quite good promise in the beginning. The gameplay is good and smooth enough that it does not become stale (at least not all the time), however it won't be long before you realize that this game is going to end REAL soon, and you get the feeling that it didn't exactly live up to expectations. The world isn't really large, there aren't a lot of locations to visit (even for side missions), and even the storyline isn't as exciting as the title might suggest.

Graphics are nothing fancy (Jade is cute, but not THAT cute) Sound is nothing fancy. The controls are simple and, again, nothing fancy.

This could have been a good game, or even a really great game if it had toted up on the difficulty and the variety of the places we could go. The multiple missions set in large dungeons almost got boring at one point (fortunately it didn't) The end of the game promises a sequel of some sort. Let's just hope that the developers can improve on it to REALLY challenge the likes of Zelda.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/13/03