Beyond Good & Evil™

It has the POTENTIAL to be a very good game. However, it just isn't. I'm guessing all the 5* reviews on here have to be from people who reviewed it after only the first level, when there's a lot of exploration and not a lot of combat. At that point, the game's shortcomings don't become apparent. On the plus side, the general concept, story, character design, graphics are all there. It has the feel of a good console adventure game, with jRPG type characters. On negative? The game doesn't handle the camera positioning and control orientation very well, especially in tight spaces. Later in the game, you'll be crawling through factories and doing a lot of combat against tougher foes. Some that won't take any damage unless taken by surprise. The problem is that the game has a nasty habit of rearranging the camera orientation multiple times or totally spazzing out in tight quarters. This is a pain because you'd be running away or carefully maneuvering a minefield one minute and suddenly find the camera angle and your travel direction reversed -- right back at the invulnerable enemies or into a bunch of mines or a laser field. At other times, when there's a wall anywhere near your character, the camera appears to reposition itself inside the wall and get stuck there -- granting you a view of grey or tan nothing and jumbled polygons and no way to see what's going on. Sometimes this corrects itself, or you can use the "compass" or "camera" view to compensate. Often, the only way is to restart from the last save and hope it goes better the next time. None of this is an issue in the early levels because it's all exploration and relatively open spaces, with no sneaking, traps or invulnerable enemies. Later in the game, however, this is a serious bug. It's a good game, right up until you get half way, then it's all frustration.

Beyond good & evil demo was the first game i played on my ps2, back then i was really surprise by it's graphics, atmosphere, enviroment and photography, the game looked like a playable playstation 1 cutscene but sadly i never got to play the full version. Found out that most people call it an underrated gem, so i was happy to buy it. PLOT So the game starts and you play as "jade" a woman who fights aliens with a stick to protect the orphans, after you beat the aliens "Alpha Section" arrive, a mercenary group who is responsible to protect people from aliens and claim that they counter the alien attack. As you progress you will work as a secret agent and your job is to uncover the truth behind Alpha Section and the alien attacks by taking a photo of every evidence. GAMEPLAY Combat On starting the game you will notice how basic the combat system is and how bad the targeting system is. Photography gets boring quickly, you just have to take a basic photo of every different species you see, for example you can take a photo of pigman's ass and you get rewarded with money. Also the evidence are very specific, you can't find any bonus hidden evidence only the necessary you need to progress. Stealth stealth do not work so well because the camera sabotage you most of the time, camera sometimes is fixed in a very bad angle and also change jerkly, imagine tring to backstab someone and have the camera changed in the last seconds. In the end stealth part felt very basic for me. Minigames The game has some fun racing minigames but nothing special really. Exploration You can explore the world map with a hoverboat but it's way too small to feel like an explorer, you will mostly visit the city and shop. CHARACTERS Most characters have none existent character development like Hahn,Mei,Nino,Peepers,Jade they just try to look cool without saying anything intersting, So with Basic combat, basic photography, basic stealth, i think the game is average and just overatted.

This game holds up suprisingly well graphically considering it released in 2003. I thought the game itself was kind of boring. Most of the game just being walking, running, driving around and button mashing during combat. and i kind of got stuck and confused in some areas of the game. The PC Version of this game has many issues on PC. Luckily the GOG Version has fixes for modern operating systems. but, By default: Controllers don’t seem to be working, Widescreen support is pretty busted, and Frame Rates above 60 have gameplay issues. I haven’t found any other issues besides those in my experience, Considering it’s age any Low End PC or Graphics Device should be able to run this.

Back when I grew up with games like these, I was always imagining how they would look in the future with less technical limitations. Well, seeing what kind of games we get nowadays, it is save to say that they don't have the kind of artistic fantasy anymore. Games like Beyond Good and Evil, strangely enough, felt so much more real in what you were capable of experiencing, than any of the high-res "genre-peaks" of today. And yes, I heard of BGE2. And no, it is not what I would have imagined. Contrary, in fact - it seems like the perfect presentation of our gaming world and is purest irony in relation to its predecessor. ...that, and it will probably not release anymore. Or maybe it will. Who knows anymore, at this point. All of that aside, what is Beyond Good and Evil? It is a 3D Adventure Game which takes this genre to heart by doing something unheard of: Mixing individual ideas of gameplay to make something that is on one side unique, but on the other rather fluently feeling. You play as Jade (and normally are accompanied by one partner) and explore the world. By feet, by sea. By climbing and jumping through mines and facilities. By fighting and sneaking (yeah, the great marketing point). And during all that, you actually also take photos, play mini games like races and ...table tennis? I guess. There is a lot - which makes the world, albeit quite small, feel rather alive and interesting to explore. The mechanics are solid as well. Never too complicated, but well executed, diverse and fun. Combat feels catchy, but so also does stealth. Sometimes the latter is required, but you can also cheese fights. Going around places and taking photos is also fun, as you always get something - rewards, dialogues, atmosphere. Technically, the game can have some issues depending on the device. You may have to fiddle around with the settings. It can also only be played with mouse and keyboard. For the price, try it out if it looks anywhere near interesting to you. Recommended!

Camera - is your enemy. It uses advanced AI techniques to select angle where don't see a thing you really need. You are stealth - camera looks right at you not enemy. You try to use gyrodisk and camera look in opposite direction requiring a lot of time to position right. Also meaning of movement direction changing with changing camera angle. Sometimes camera could be controlled with mouth, sometimes mouse control direction too. Control could be and should be remapped in SettingsApplication, coming along the game. Main problem is a lag in response, you couldn't just stop your combo against thin air to switch attack or sometimes Space/Shift acts like toggle and other like switch. Game mechanics are carefully underthought. You doesn't get enough feeling on how to use them and you right at the final boss and... It hurts. Unskipable cutscenes you forced to watch time after time while proceeding with quest adds pain too. All these while story is ok (could be better, much better) and graphics is good enough.