Review: Beyond Good & Evil

Developer: Ubi Soft
Released: 11/11/2003
Released for: GC, PC, Xbox, PS2
Reviewd on: GC

You’re Jade, a journalist living on the planet of Hyllis. You live with a talking pig in a lighthouse, and you shelter orphans from the war with the Domz – evil creatures that move through the universe obliterating everything in their path. You earn money by photographing the wildlife, while trying to solve the mystery of the Alpha Sections – the supposed protectors of your planet.

Let me just start out by saying that this game has huge amounts of class. Huge. From the opening 5 minutes you can see that Ubi Soft went all out with this game. The environments are rich and detailed, the characters are deep, the voice acting is suberb(and almost everything in the game is voice acted). Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, this is not a kids-only game. It has a lot of elements and situations that make the game immensely enjoyable to kids and adults alike. And its not a cartoony Disney game. So stop thinking that right now.

The music in the game is bar none. Everything has a slightly spanish vibe to it, that is interesting, without getting overly repetitive or annoying, and the music throughout the game is varied to the point of you almost never hearing the same music from location to location.

The animations in the game were all extremely well done. It fills me with joy that motion capture has finally become a viable enough technology that it’s used in almost everything related to character animation. Running, walking, and especially fighting are all without the chopiness that infests so many games. Ubi Soft seems to have gotten this down pretty well. Just look at Prince of Persia, which has won more awards than I have fingers, toes, and other extremeties.

The graphics are excellent. From water effects that make your jaw drop in awe, to the characters themselves, which are nothing short of amazing. I had little to quibble about in the eye candy department. A game who’s graphics are good enough that every cutscene can be rendered in-game without looking horrible, is good enough to get an ‘A’ from me in the graphics department.

The gameplay is like a ball filled with icing, rubbery on the outside, and sweet on the inside. I have no idea what that actually means, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out. In actuality, the game has few flaws in the play deparment. It mixes a good combination of sneaking and fighting to keep you interested and occupied. Mix in a little racing, some puzzle solving, and some item collection and its a pretty well-balance game. The sneaking gets a little long in parts, but the game is short enough(see flaws below) that it doesn’t really get to be a problem. And the fighting is well done enough, that if you get tired of sneaking, at least in the first half of the game or so, you can always just fight your way through.

The game is far from flawless, though I doubt that there any games that have ever reached that definition. The biggest problem that I had with the game is the camera. As with all 3D games, developers still haven’t managed to figure out how to make a camera that doesn’t get stuck in confined spaces, or is hard to manouvre around corners. Ubi Soft did relatively well with constructive architecture, but in the later areas of the game, the camera just plain got stuck, and the only thing you can do is jump through unknown peril until it adjusts itself. The ability to manually adjust it helps, but only to a point.

The other (rather small) problem that I had with the game is that it’s short. Like, you-can-beat-it-in-a-weekend-without-missing-any-major-meals-or-sleep kind of short. The game took me about 9 hours without getting many of the pearls, a kind of collectible currency, above what you need. There are 88 pearls in the game, and I found 60 or so of them. This said, there is still a lot to do in the game. You can participate in races with your hovercraft to win pearls, money, and glory. Or you can do a little betting on a game sort of like air hockey. Or you can just explore the rich and detailed world that Ubi Soft has so conveniently provided. Ubi Soft seems to have found its niche in games which are relatively short, and easy to produce, but which are immensly enjoyable. I think other game companies should take notice that their 6 year $2 million production cycles which produce mediocre at best aren’t working that well.

For the $20 that this game costs, I think you could do worse. A lot worse. Most people spend more money on a movie for 1 with snacks, and get less enjoyment. So support the company and buy this game.

Sound:5 out of 5

Gameplay:4 out of 5

Overall: