Everything Anachronox did wrong Beyond Good and Evil does right - the areas, the "dungeons" (they really cannot be called such in this lively and living world), the photocamera mechanic (horribly bugged out in Anachronox, perfect here), even the random spawning enemies JRPGeqsque combat with time slowing attack, the puzzles, and the story - unlike Anachronox, there's no childish 2-cents humor in BGE and over the top inappropriate moments. Hyllys seams alive and living, which the Anachronox universe and writing seems like it came out of that insane clown from the Star Trek series. I had, however to reduce the stars to 4, due to the obligation of racing ( that is if you don't race, you will not be able to progress in the game). That is a major breaking point the developers should have thought about. I'm buying an adventure game, not a racing game, so if you're so inclined - please include stuff (like it was done in the Gamecube Harry Potter series) I don't want to spend more than 10 minutes on the racing part and I absolutely don't want to tediously repeat the tracks (those who played will know what I'm talking about).
Would have been a nice game with a little more interactivity and less cut-scenes. The visual environment is perfect, unfortunately the characters are a little bit too satirical and the story isn't that engaging to keep back after having often backtracked and having the same cut-scenes showed in your face again and again. Worth playing a little, but don't bother persisting if you encounter serious trouble. Well, I played it for 3 days, out of which a lot have been just loading, backtracking and cutscenes. If someone wants this game as a gift - ok to buy, but avoid it unless you are a big fan of JRPG and their stilted narration and combat system. OMG this never ends does it? I'll use yammer then - Why do they need a minimum review length now? Do they seriously think it will deter people from leaving negative reviews for the games people don't really like, of course it won't.
The story is great, the missions are great, the variety is great but the skill progression and the hard-assedness of enemies kills even the most resistant crab captain. It's supposed to be mysterious, unpredictable but at the same time relaxing and not too time consuming, and it becomes really stressful and time consuming once you actually get going somewhere, and then some random beefed-out monster attacks you and you are back to square one.... It takes too much time to do anything. Sometimes I'd literally weigh down the button and go make some tea, because of how long time things take in this game. I really don't have that much time to play.... and I wish the gamemakers undestood this.
With all the fixes (DirectX, compatibility mode and windowed mode) it's still just a blinking black screen, really a pity.
As I said it's a terribad shooter on rails, compared to the original Red Faction. A downgrade for every aspect of the single played game. I don't regret buying it, since it was a bundle, but it's just a terrible, terribly-written game with an uninspiring scenario, stupid set pieces and so forth. Play the original Red Faction, forget this one ever existed.
Great game but literally impossible to progress on the Japanese (Axis) campaign past mission 5 with or without the cheat with the prestige bug. How am I supposed to fight a mission without any mechanized airdropped units? As a matter of fact - how the hell there are no airdropped units but light infantry, which gets mowed down like no tomorrow, while there were airdropped mechanized infantry and light tanks during the war? Talonsoft's West and East Front understood that and allowed you to airdrop all that. How the hell am I supposed to place all units, when there are no place to put some units? And so forth. Notably for the mission 5 - how the hell am I supposed to battle the entire Indian ocean fleet of the English and their entire land forces, wipe all of those out losing most of my forces in the process and still lose, because I didn't get to the opposite end of the map? That's ridiculous... Why nobody remembers the independence movements - notably Subhas Chandrabose in India and what would have hypothetically happened if the Japanese would have won the Burma campaign? Positive points - entertaining and has great potential with the combination of sea and land campaign, unfortunately not the entirety of the potential is used.
