Ubisoft hasn't had any problems defining itself on the Playstation 2. With hits like the Prince of Persia games, they've taking gaming to interesting places. Beyond Good and Evil keeps that same mentality going while becoming one of the major cult favorites from that generation of gaming.
While starting the game, I noticed a few things that have bothered me over the years with video games. First off, the Ubisolf logo. They really want you to know who made this game, so Ubisoft decided to make their logo intro an unskippable part of the game. It's like they were so proud of the game they made, they keep throwing their logo at you like, 'Look, look! We made this game! I know, we can't believe it either." The second bothersome moment is selecting a language. This is the only game I've been prompted to select a language of the game every single time that I fire it up. Why not just ask that in the beginning of a new game or put it in the settings? I doubt there's a giant bilingual demographic in the gaming community that would enjoy switching up the language that often. I live in American, as far as I know, American is the only language in the world. DUR! The third strike comes from the game's lack of auto-selecting the Load Game option when it checks your memory card for a save file. It forever stays at New Game, meaning, you'll forget that New Game is default and you'll mash X through it all only to have to restart and try again. But this is really nit-picking right off the bat, let's get into some of the good.
The best thing that can be said is, this game lacks no attention to creativity and originality. You control Jade who is accompanied by Pej, and later HH, through many areas around the string of islands known as the Hillys to help uncover a secret plot between the invading aliens known as Domz and the supposed protectors of Hillys, the Alpha Section. Jade is a reporter equipped a combat pole and her camera, both of which are put to good use. Most of your missions involve taking pictures of certain clues to send to the Iris Network to uncover the truth of what's going on in the small island community. Along the way, you'll meet a colorful cast of characters of various animal derivatives and humans a-like: rostafarian rhinos, pig mechanics, etc, that will take you from your humble lighthouse orphanage to the far reaches of the moon. Despite being a relatively small world to roam around, it's full of life and little details that make you believe this rather cartoon-ish world.
The graphics are perfect for the level of cartoonishness that is presented. The areas are nicely detailed and colorful and the character designs have their own exaggerated features and personality. There not really anything bad to be said about any aspect of the presentation, the cartoon-nature doesn't come off as overly childish or off-putting. The lush graphics mixed with vibrant personalities all fit so well together, along with a soundtrack that has just as much personality and originality than the rest world. Voice acting is also well done, there's not a single blemish on the voice work in this game.
There's tons of variation to be found in this game: from running around on foot, to controlling your hovercraft to piloting a space ship, the game does well with changing up game play to keep everything feeling fresh. The best moments are the scripted chase scenes with combine the perfect mixture of fun and excitement. There's also plenty to collect around the world. You need to find pearls to buy upgrades for your vehicles in order to progress through the story. You can go to the races to find some, you can explore Looters Dens, you can take photos of the local wildlife, or you can simply just buy them. Most likely, you'll participate all of these events at least one time because you'll need a lot of the 88 pearls found throughout the game. When you're not being sidetracked, game play is comprised of sneaking around, platforming and combat. Ubisoft, being especially French, have always had trouble with combat. Since there's not an option to surrender during every fight, we must defend ourselves. Though functional, combat lacks precision. You'll mostly be mashing the attack button while pressing in the direction of the enemy. Sometimes your camera (one you're carrying, not the game camera) will be mixed into the combat when you get the disk-throwing glove, but its not very well-handled. Attacking with your power pole is done in 3rd person, while camera work is done in 1st person. Not sure why you have to be in camera mode to throw disks, but transitioning while enemies are surrounding you is not smooth or intuitive.
Like I said earlier, you're accompanied by a companion throughout most of the game and they get in on all the action. You can initiate a power move which helps you in combat, you can use your partner to access areas of a level you couldn't by yourself. Your partner does tend to be a liability since their health is significantly lower than yours and they're not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Their effectiveness is limited but they're not terrible either. HH does, however, get in the way a lot since he's a huge soldier in full armor. He'll stand in your way in a narrow hallways, he'll block your camera when he's following you, he'll stand in the way of photos when you're trying to take a quick snapshot, its just annoying. Too bad there's not a command to tell him to go wait in the corner while you take care of business.
Probably the biggest short-coming of the game is... it's just too short. You can beat it your first time through in about 6 or 7 hours, much less if you know what you're doing. There's only about 6 dungeon in the game, the final one being pretty linear. Kinda like this paragraph.
I would like to say I had the only play through this game once, but twice was the magic number. It was not my intention, but due to a particularly famous glitch, I was forced to restart the entire game. You see, at a random point in the game, there is a small chance of your partner vanishing from the game entirely. No more partner, no more progression, no more game. Your partner is vital to completing the game, losing them is unacceptable. The game decided to pull this crap with me at the last level; getting off my spaceship, my partner was no where to be found. Not knowing what to do, I saved and looked up the problem. The rest is a blur of red-hot anger and swearing. I'm not sure how the game made it out with such a fatal flaw, but if this game weren't so good, it would've been in the trash.
Sans the worst glitch in history, Beyond Good and Evil is a great game. The personality of the game is one-of-a-kind and is well-executed. What brevity it has is filled with a great narrative and great game play.
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