Beyond Good & Evil

"A superlative adventure everyone should try - especially girls."

Beyond Good and Evil is, simply put, one of the best adventure games ever made. Its story is compelling, its presentation is awe-inspiring, and its play mechanics are intuitive and fun. Although it did not sell well, and there is no plan for a sequel, this is the kind of game that will be enjoyable to first time players for years and years to come. The fact that the game has a very respectable and fun female protagonist should make this game particularly appealing to girl gamers who are tired of the mysogenistic milieu of female characters whose only role in most game is to be the captive maiden who is a reward for the masculine main character.

Beyond Good and Evil does have its share of flaws, and is not perfect. I'll say what I disliked about it first. The game is too easy to complete. It does not have the depth of a final fantasy game, or even a Zelda game. The game is too short - the quality of the game demands a greater quantity of more challenging material. Beyond Good and Evil also ends rather abruptly. That is all that I have to say that is negative, and looking back over what I've written, it may be harsher than I actually feel about those shortcomings.

Graphics and sound:

But the graphics! and the music! Beyond Good and Evil has one of, if not the greatest. soundtracks of any game ever. Just google search the game and check out the message boards, half of them are dedicated to discussing the music! It's the only game that I regularly listen to the soundtrack for pleasure.

while not on par with the soundtrack, the graphics are also beautiful to behold. The games use of greens, particularly, creates a vibrant world that is very organic looking. Though set in a somewhat cartoonish world, the graphics are highly stylized without relying on the cell shading technique used to make so many games look "distinct."

Gameplay:

I loved the stealth in this game. It is not nearly as frustrating or tedious as it is in other games (I'm looking at you, splinter cell and Metal Gear Solids 2 and 3). the stealth portions also fit more realistically into the storyline than they do in a game such as Zelda. The stealth segments in this game I actually looked forward to because they were fun to play.

the fighting system is too elementary, but it is passable considering the "combat" in other games such as sphynx and the cursed mummy, or, in my opinion, even ratchet and clank. Combat isn't really a huge part of the game play anyway, and when there is a battle, it is usually pretty exciting because of the dramatic choral score that comes on as the fight engages. I was reminded of the exciting scene in Star Wars: Phantom Menace (ugh, I like the scene but hate the movie) where Obi-wan and Qui-gon fight Darth Maul.

Photo-collecting also plays a large role in the adventure, but unlike other games where collection is boring and slow (Resident evil, Zelda, Final fantasy, etc, etc, etc) photo collecting in beyond Good and Evil is actually quite fun, not overly difficult (by which I mean tedious), and makes sense in the context of the story.

Story:

This is an excellent role playing action adventure with a great story, centered around a FEMALE HEROIN! and she is not dressed in a sleazy bikini, and her butt never shows because of the way she flips through the air, and she is not portrayed as a sex object! what a concept!

Jade is one of the best protagonists, male or female, ever created: she is smart, she is tough, she is resourceful, and she is downright heroic! she actually speaks with the other characters of the game (ahem, mario rpg, zelda) and she reacts like a real person, with anger, sympathy, amusement, and sorrow. She is professional, with a realistic job as a reporter / photographer for a newspaper trying to bring down an authoritarian ruling class of aliens by proving their guilt.

the missions all revolve around Jade's efforts to help an underground movement expose the Domz, an evil alien overlord race, as the cruel fascists that they are. In other role playing games the threat is that an out of control group of people are going to take over the world. Beyond Good and Evil completely circumvents this cliche and makes the story relevant to our own world by saying that the authoritarians are already in control, and people have just been fine with it because they are ignorant about the actual state of affairs.

I would go so far as to say that this is one of the few games where the politics involved are handled subtly, as opposed to the heavy handed tripe handed out by Metal Gear Solid or Xenogears. The game's emphasis on the importance of a free press and its value to the health of society is and admirable, downright democratic message.

Conclusion:

As you can probably tell, I really like this game. My girlfriend and I played it straight through over the course of a week, and we still talk about it all the time, with plans to replay it again sometime when it's not so fresh in our memory. But I suggest to anyone, if you have ever enjoyed a zelda game, or a story driven stealth game, and you love exotic music and good writing, then this game will probably have something to offer you.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/05