After hearing this game being praised highly for years, I decided to finally pick it up. It certainly didn’t disappoint. A lot of people who didn’t like this game seemed to have issues with the fact that the game seems to be tailored towards a younger audience. This is true to some extent, although it didn’t really bother me.The story and characters in the game reminded me of a pixar movie: it’s somewhat kiddy, but the game is nevertheless enjoyable for all ages. You play as Jade, a reporter trying to expose the truth about a corrupt government. The story isn’t particulary impressive, but compelling nonetheless. You’ll really start to care for the characters and you’ll want to know how the story ends. The graphics still hold up very well. The game has an original, 'cartoony' style, and it still looks very good today.I did, however, encounter some graphical glitches. Nothing gamebreaking, but annoying anyway. Some helpful support on the forums helped me reduce the glitchiness by a lot, but it never completely disappeared. Where the graphics and the story are decent, the soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. It includes some basic video game theme, such as orchestral pieces to enhance the epic moments, and a solo piano piece that plays during the tear-jerking parts. The composer of the game’s soundtrack pulls these off very well, but also adds some unbelievably catchy songs that seems to be sung in either spanish or complete gibberish. I could barely make out any words, but the songs are real earworms, and I found myself yelling along pretty quickly. This great soundtrack also comes with the game, which is very nice. Lastly, there’s the gameplay, and BGE really shines in that department. You’ll perform different tasks in this game, and the vast majority of them are very fun to play. What’s most impressive however, is the sheer variety of the tasks you’ll perform. One moment you’ll be sneaking around a secret base trying to free a fellow reporter, another time you’ll fly above the sea in your hovercraft trying to take a picture of a whale, and at one point in the game you’ll find yourself playing some kind of SF version of air hockey against a talking shark (I shit you not). This way, you are unlikely to ever get bored. You’re in a rollercoaster, never doing something so long it gets boring, and always moving on to the next task. This makes BGE a very fun game to play. In short, Beyond Good and Evil is a game you should most likely get. If you want a deep, mature story, you might have to look elsewhere, but if you want to have some light-hearted fun in a beautiful fantasy world, this is a must-buy!
This game hasn’t got much going for it. The graphics are passable, but nothing special. There‘s some nice enough music in it, but that’s really only played during the opening and the ending scenes. While playing you’ll only hear the same endless, mind-numbing "song" played over and over, to the point where I eventually turned off the sound. The story isn’t particulary interesting either. I did have a few chuckles while playing, mainly because some of the characters and jokes are genuinely funny. These moments are few and far between though. On top of that, the game is really short. It took me a good part of an afternoon to get through, and I guess experienced players of adventure games will breeze through it in a matter of hours. The one thing that’s really great about this game is that it’s free! So there’s really no reason not to pick it up. You probably won’t want to go out of your way to play it, but if you’ve got some time to kill and nothing else to do, this game is perfect!
