Beyond Good & Evil

"an enjoyable, but short and watered down hybrid"

This game failed to meet my expectations. I, like many others, picked it up after hearing a lot of hype about how this game is a 'Zelda killer' only to find that I had purchased some weird hybrid. It was fun, but sub par compared to a pure game of any of the genre it tries to emulate. The gameplay was nothing special, every aspect seemed watered down by comparison.

On top of that, it is criminally short. You find out everywhere you'll go for the whole rest of the game and then proceed through it in linear fashion after the first hour and a half of the game! Whenever that happens in a game you know something's wrong!

There are only four dungeons in the game, two of which are *REALLY* short. And there isn't much in the way of optional side areas, except a handful of races and bonus stealth sections which you can easily find and likely complete on your first time through in a total time of under an hour. Plus the developers try to trick you and make you think you'll be exploring an expansive world by claiming that there are a whopping 88 pearls to collect. Unfortunately you find that you are rewarded five to ten plus pearls for doing a short 3 minute task!

I don't want to go into the story, so let's just say that it's nothing special and there are no twists. You'll know everything there is to know about the story shortly after the first dungeon of the game which may take you only an hour or so to reach.

The graphics and sound are decent, but again nothing spectacular. However, the lack of enemy variety is very disappointing. You'll be fighting the same Alpha Sections cartoonish 'Space Commando' type enemies for 2/3 of the game. Not multiple types of alpha sections, the same exact enemy model with the same exact attack pattern for 2/3 of the game! There is a similar dearth of boss creatures only its 3x as extreme! I find it laughable that they had to reuse the same centipede creature for the boss fight in the boat three different times with no changes to attack patterns or appearance or anything. There are also not too many background music tracks but fortunately you'll finish the game just as it begins to grate on your nerves. So since this game is so short, it's not as much of a problem.

This game tries to be many things, a 'Zelda-Lite' style adventure, a racing game, a shooter, and a stealth action game. The problem is, in each area the game is lacking compared to a full game from each respective genre. Jack of all trades master of none describes Beyond Good and Evil perfectly.

One of the problems with the 'adventure' aspect of this game is the lack of depth. There's just not a lot to it. You start the game being able to swing your stick to whack enemies. You can lean against objects to push them. You game push buttons, and you later gain the ability to shoot discs. You always have a second character following you around most of the time and this character uses his 'super action' which is usually situational doing something simple like standing on a button, causing the screen to shake and paralyze enemies, or pushing a button to move something somewhere.

That's all there is too it. Unlike Zelda you don't gain a variety of different items with different uses. Unlike Zelda there's virtually no backtracking and using your newfound abilities to get into new areas.
It's mostly run, flip a switch hit the triangle button whack a monster, run ... ad infinitum ...

Combat lacks significant depth. It's mindless button mashing. You can parry, with the square button or flip backwards, or charge up your staff and that's it.But Most of the time you will be mashing that button since the enemies will hit you and interrupt you during the ridiculously long charge time.

You are required to use a camera to take photos of animals, and for your objectives, but its just a last minute gimmick on the part of the developers. You go through the dungeon. And then take your photo. And that's it. This adds nothing to the game. The camera is not used creatively.

Hmm, let's see what's left...There are a lot of stealth sections in the dungeons after the first but they are again nothing special. They are nothing compared to the kind of gameplay offered by a full action stealth game. Outside of the dungeons you drive around in a hover craft, there are very few places you can go other than the dungeons or a tiny 'town'. The 'town' consists of a few exits to some stealth side sections that take a couple minutes each to complete, a shop, and a bar where you walk into a room on the second floor to be briefed for a few minutes and collect your pearls for completing each dungeon. There are no interesting side quests in the town, which is certainly disappointing. There are a few people you can talk to but they say nothing important and you gain nothing by not just going straight to the sections I mentioned, so you might as well just ignore them.

Overall, it's a decent game but not a great game. It's certainly enjoyable, and you'll probably finish it in one day so I would recommend a possible rental if you're bored out of your mind and you have finished every other game that seems interesting to you. You'll find it tries to emulate too many different kinds of games and in doing so, it lacks some of the key elements of each one.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/04