Retrospective: Beyond Good & Evil Comments by John Walker

I have it running perfectly on Vista, you need to disable Vertex Processing and Anti-Aliasing to get it working well.

Lovely review, BG&E is one of my favourite games and I find myself still recommending it to people to this day.

Got it earlier today from Steam - at EUR5 this must be the best value for money I ever got from a game :)

Thanks EG!

I stand by my reader review on this. This is the kind of game that reminds me why I love playing games (and why I do kinda like writing about them on a hobby basis). It's beautiful, warm. It is dramatic but cleverly never goes too emo, lifting the mood with some very clever and amusing jokes. It blends different genres seamlessly. The story is tight and compelling, the cutscenes amazing, and even if the game is short and rather easy - so what? It's replayable, and still even now as said a genius piece of gaming which can be picked up for a fiver (or less in some shops bargain bins).

I do understand why some don't like it. I just disagree. BG&E was one of the few games I'd say were the best ever made. It was unpretentious, a game to be enjoyed rather than blasted through. Once I'd realised that, and restarted it, I began to notice the silly details that made me smile.

The sequel had better be as good. It looks gorgeous (if a little far from the brash cartoony world I enjoyed), and the attention to detail is amazing. They'd better follow on well... and explain to me exactly what the %£^$ that extra bit of ending after the credits was about...

I loved this game but I'm stuck on the end boss for the time being, will have to have another pop at it later.

try turning around the pad when fighting the last boss :-)

Distinctly overrated game IMO, I'm glad others love it, but I found it to be a complete non starter.

Superb game! I loved Pey'j and HH and the gameplay was a dream.

One of my top ten fave games ever (for what it's worth)

However, I seem to have two niggles that everyone else seems to see as strengths in the game.

1) I never actually liked Jade all that much. She served her purpose as my avatar in a virtual world - but nothing more. Especially after the lighthouse is destroyed, her behaviour seems schizophrenic and puzzling. Her relationship with others was portrayed well, but a s character in her own right, I just wasn't blown away.

2) The story was a bit crap. Granted, I read one hell of a lot of good books and watch only the most plot-driven, tght movies; but still, the story seemed very weak. When people stop accepting that video games' stories shouldn't be as good as those in other mediums, we might be able to raise our expectations.

I thought I had to crash the party, but luckily coolbritannia went ahead... Tried this game twice, and played a considerable part both times.

Certainly not a bad game, but this is unbelievably overhyped.

Certainly not a bad game, but this is unbelievably overhyped.

Er, nope. People played it, and loved it. That's not the same as "overhyped", whether you like the game or not.

I liked it. To my mind, it was a more visually interesting Star Fox Adventures, and highlighted the importance of visual and cinematic aesthetics in videogames. It remains a game that is better than the sum of its parts, due to its unique and engaging characters and will undoubtedly divide opinion as a result.

I'm tempted to track this one down and give it a shot, but after doing the same for Psychonauts, (which IMO was a terrible platformer, with unfunny dialogue and ugly art direction) I might not... The gameplay doesn't look anything special to me...

"Psychonauts, (which IMO was a terrible platformer, with unfunny dialogue and ugly art direction)"
Ah, so you're blind and crippled in your hands with a sense of humour to match that of a dead fish.

's about the only logical explanation for that comment.

BG&E is one of the finest games ever. I am still in love with Jade. I hope the sequel keeps the design and style of the original - the teaser screenshots look a bit "realistic" I think.

The final boss though...Oh my god, I wanted to kill who ever designed that last bitt. Murder brutally, chop him into little bitts and sprinkle him around the game development community as a dark lesson never to make something that frustratingly bad again.

But otherwise a great game, hope the sequal actually gets made since it´s gone awfully quite since the teaser movie.

Wasn't jade in HL2, or was it her sister?

Great game, shame that Ubi has already stated their intention to dumb down gameplay in orther to reach the casual market.

@warzin:

Good point. I knew she looked familiar.

Played it on PS2 it's a great game.

FenderMaster - If you found the writing in Psychonauts unfunny, then no, you certainly shouldn't try BG&E. Not because the humour is similar in any way, but because you shouldn't play anything, ever.

And yes, at one point when writing this I was going to do a compare and contrast with Alyx. But then I forgot.

Is it sad that I had a little mini-paroxysm of happiness when I saw that this article *gasp* actually treats HH like, oh my god, a member of the main cast and not some foul, unimportant side-character who exists only to spite the Pey'j-lovers of the world? I mean, I love the pig too, but it seems like a lot of the writing about this game either minimizes his importance (my response: Way to ignore 2/3rds of the game there) or blows him off altogether. Which is a darn shame, because he's uniquely charming in his own way. The game wouldn't be the same without him or Pey'j, so blowing off either one is basically ignoring a third of the game's soul. Plus, I don't think I've ever seen such a dead-on send-up of the Action Movie Hero Boy before. ;)

I'm a bit disappointed you didn't mention the music, though. It is by turns gorgeous (such as the overworld or lighthouse themes), beautifully atmospheric (the mineshaft and sneaking music), outright hilarious (the battle theme for the egg-shaped robots--the one they "sing"--and the first and last race music themes), and just plain catchy ("Propaganda! [Just a bit, man!]"). There's also that awwweeesome spiral-shaped text input interface, which probably doesn't sound cool just talking about it, but seriously--once you've used it, everything else seems terrible in comparison. It's probably the best console text input I've ever seen.

I'm cool with people not liking the game, but it's one of my all-time favorites--that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I'm not that in to the overarching story, but I love the characters and how they exist within it, and, damn... That lighthouse scene drove me to tears. Plus, I think there's a tendency to take this game a bit too seriously--I view it as essentially a dramedy, devoted to equal parts emotional torque machine and slapstick comedy. And for the most part, I think it does it well. ;)

UncleLou: I still think it's one of those cases where everyone praises it, because it's "cool" to love it. Similar to the Dreamcast for example. I still got a DC in my room, but it's certainly not among the best consoles ever. :) Just putting it into perspective, ratings back then for BG&E were spot on, ranging in the low 80s. Everything above that is "underground insider crowd / forumite hype".

siro - One problem with your argument is that it would depend on people not being able to articulate why they love the game. I hope I've gone some way to doing that in this article, such that you cannot dismiss my affection for the game as an attempt to be "cool".

The other enormous problem with claiming people like it to look cool is, well, it's nonsense, isn't it? Standing in the club, leaning against the wall, telling people you're a big fan of the 2005 action game Beyond Good & Evil, isn't *famous* for its allure.

But most of all, telling people that they're lying about enjoying something is plain ridiculous. I've found, over the hundreds of years of this job, that when someone says, "everyone praises it, because it's 'cool' to love it", what this really means is, "I don't get it, and I feel left out."

I loved this game but got to the point (between the slaughterhouse and the moon, I believe) where you need to buy the flight upgrades for your hovercraft, which cost a lot of orbs, and I could never be arsed with the 'sidequest' orb collecting. Apparently there were loads of orbs up some volcano or something but really I just wanted to continue the main plot.
I got to that point, didn't have nearly enough orbs, and just turned the game off. And couldn't turn it back on.

A shame really. I suppose it means I didn't love it all that much.
Though... if there existed a cheat code to get x number of orbs I would go back and play it right now. Alas.

(I'm calling the garage currency orbs but they're probably called pearls or spheres or dollars or something, so do forgive me)

But most of all, telling people that they're lying about enjoying something is plain ridiculous. I've found, over the hundreds of years of this job, that when someone says, "everyone praises it, because it's 'cool' to love it", what this really means is, "I don't get it, and I feel left out."

Exactly.

I don't know what's wrong with a simple "I don't like it". No, people on the internet always seem to go a step further.

Er, nope. People played it, and loved it. That's not the same as "overhyped", whether you like the game or not.

Well said, I guess I don't need to add my part now. =)

Anyhow, yes an AMAZING game, totally blew out of the water as I wasn't expecting this game to grow on me as it did. (see Chrono Trigger for the same effect xD)

I always thought that this game took alot of brave steps succesfully, and it's good to see that John Walker feels the same way too!

I am so happy that a sequel may be on the books, however I do worry that with Ubi's so-so track record as of late and their philosophy of "Actually we don't care about reviews because load of mainstreamers bought our shit Wii games" the sequel could potentially suffer, but let's hope not. =)

I really loved this game.

I am still dissapointed this and Rallisport 2 are not B/C on the 360. two of my favourite games ever Microsoft you fools! (don’t tell the filthy money grabbers, but I'd pay money to play these again, even though I still own them).

Making the sequal more accessible is fine in my book because I think some people not familiar with computer game conventions might be stumped by some of the mentioned difficulty spikes, and it’s everybody should be able to enjoy. As long as the sequal retains the beautiful art design and charming characters then I'll be happy.

It truly was a golden xmas for Ubisoft that year (2003), with Sands of Time, Splinter Cell and the super-stylish if only functional shooter XIII all landing within weeks of each other. To my mind BG&E was the best of the lot of them, and this retrospective really nails many of the reasons it struck a chord with me. A wonderful game; I just hope they don't screw up the long-awaited sequel.

By the way, yes it is a bargain on Steam, but if you're in the UK there is an even cheaper option to get this awesome game.

Yes, that's right. £0.00 - basically you just pay £2.99 P&P.

Since I have my share of popular games I dislike, I won't lay too much into the people who disliked Beyond Good & Evil. But I think they're wrong :).

And yes, I did play it, right to the end, I even beat the end boss after much struggle. Just turn your keyboard/pad upside down and play like that.

It's a brilliant, brilliant game. And no, it's not Nietzsche, but it's one of the very few games I ever played where I really loved the writing/mood/direction/whatever you want to call it, but don't call it "story" because it demeans it. It has a great, lighthearted mood, many funny bits, some fantastic set pieces, a few moments when it switches gears perfectly towards a more somber mood, great character design, amazing music, very good cut-scenes and some well set-up moments of semi-free-form beauty, usually when you get to photograph some gorgeous sea creature.

And yes, HH is mentioned too little, he was a great companion.

There's only one single weak bit in the entire game IMHO and it's that fucking stupid "reverse the controls" boss fight right at the end - almost ruined the entire thing but thankfully the game saved itself with a masterful and nasty twist after the credits!

Been playing this again myself recently. Must be the season for it. The insta-death stealth bits are a bit pap but the rest of the game more than makes up for those.

And Jade looks so much better in this than she appears to look in the new teaser (where they seem to have reverted back to the original concept they had for her - bah)

Seeing the new Beyond Good & Evil teaser trailer actually made me buy an XBox 360.

Seeing the new Beyond Good & Evil teaser trailer actually made me buy an XBox 360.

ObiwanShinobi:
Something keeps telling me you haven't played many console games. Zelda, anyone?

Yeah I agree, this game has Zelda written all over it. But it's a good kind of rip off, able to stand on its own two feet. However I don't get the reviewers praise over the stealthy bits in the factory, I found them too long and annoying. For me it's more like an 8 or 9, but one that does retain that score over the years. Warm feelings, but no masterpiece such as the zeldas that it was copying in control style.

thankfully the Wii was backwards compatible and about the only thing i play on it now is B&G for the gamecube!

such a great game.

Fantastic game, according to Ancel the GC version was the "definitive" one for some reason. Played it on the PS2 myself but what a purchase, can't wait for the sequel.

I played through it recently when the trailer for 2 came out and it's a game that will stand the test of time. Just so wonderfully wonderful.

Glad to see some spreading of the wonderfulness of Beyond good and evil, and thanks to Walker, i hadn't noticed the bandage yet.

Only 90 comments... The love for this beauty is still not high enough...

Brilliant game, loved playing it from start to end. Please give it a go folks if you've not tried it!

Excellent, excellent article! And the spiraling text input deservers another mention. That this has never been copied is mind-boggling.

Also a tip for pad-lovers: I played it with the 360 pad, using the Pinnacle pad-support software (http://www.pinnaclegameprofiler.com), and after customzing the inputs to be almost the same as the original Xbox version that works great!

I loved this game and I didn't mind its short length, it's a great little action adventure. But I still think it gets a bit too much press, plus it irritates me when someone says it's better than Zelda.

Hmm... I never played this game due to the demo being terrible (it was some kind of tedious boss fight while controlling a hovercraft IIRC), I wonder how many other people were put off by the same thing?

Mind you, I'm now put off by people mentioning stealth sections... I pretty much universally hate stealth mechanics in games, especially in games from a few years ago when it became insanely fashionable to jam a stealth level into every single game.

As for Psychonauts: I'm not really sure what the fuss is about there. I played the first few levels and honestly it seemed like a pretty mediocre platformer with some ok humour. I'm not saying it's a bad game, but I don't get why people seem to think it's such a work of genius. Matter of taste, I guess.

@Shiraman

The first few levels? Then you haven't even scraped the surface of Psychonauts. It get's better by each level, and when you complete it, you will se what the fuss is about.

I just like the whole Fifth Element Vibe it had.

@MORZTAN

Well I got to that boardgame level with Napoleon, and imo the gameplay only gets worse. Some concepts are interesting, like the twisted Milkman conspiracy and Godzilla Raz, but the problem ist that it just doesn't play particularly well imo...

And the writing, while ok by videogame standards, hardly rivals a decent cartoon like Simpsns, Futurama, Family Guy, South Park etc.

Is there some twist at the end that makes it all worth while? Because I've been thinking about going back and finishing it, it's just that every time I load it up, i just don't find it very fun....

Next up: Psychonauts Retrospective

(Do want)

@siro:

"UncleLou: I still think it's one of those cases where everyone praises it, because it's "cool" to love it."


Frankly, bullshit.

I personally have been evangelising this game to anyone that will listen for the better part of the 5½ years since its release when I bought it (PC version). It's a fantastic game with a warm heart that deserved a lot more commercial success than it ever gained.

The relationship between Pey'j and Jade is one of the most genuine I've ever come across in a game, and you can really feel the affection they have for one another.

The atmosphere the game produces is nothing short of superb, with the musical score underpinning the emotional ebbs and flows as well as any Hollywood flick. And unlike most, I didn't really have that much of a problem with the final boss, and beat it after a handful of re-tries.

I remember collecting all the pearls, all the photos, basically 100%ing the game, I loved it (and still do) that much.

I genuinely feel sorry for those who don't appreciate this masterpiece for what it is. Maybe it's been over hyped (and I realise the irony here), but it is definitely a game that everyone should play through at least once, to see how games should be made.

And koopa: It is better than the majority of Zelda games, and I'm a huge fan of, and have played all the Zelda games made. It has the same action and puzzle elements of Zelda, but has something that Zelda for me has never really displayed a lot of, and that's emotion.

And I'm hoping for some pay-off with the original's post-credits twist in the sequel.

I still have it installed on my PC and it looks as gorgeous now as it ever did.

Fantastic game. One of my all time favourites that I remember well to this day, and one I couldn't stop playing until I'd completed it, which was rather rare for me at the time.

It's a shame they never fixed the prob;em where if you reverse the y-axis it also reverses the x-axis. I bought it on release on the PC but never got to play it because I was waiting on a patch that never came.

"And koopa: It is better than the majority of Zelda games, and I'm a huge fan of, and have played all the Zelda games made. It has the same action and puzzle elements of Zelda, but has something that Zelda for me has never really displayed a lot of, and that's emotion. "


Now, I like BG&E a lot, but I have to stop you there. I cannot imagine for the life of me how some people come to this conclusion. The combat in BG&E is incredibly shallow and controls horribly compared to anything but perhaps the very first NES Zelda. Compared to Zelda's highly interactive environments, the game overworld in BG&E, while seemingly not too small at first sight, has so few details and things to do that they can be counted on one hand, making it feel tiny, and again, shallow. The "dungeons" are linear and limited, with very little in terms of puzzles. Again, every single Zelda game greatly trumps it in this regard.

BG&E is a wonderful experience, kind of like an interactive feature film, where you're free to run around somewhat. But as a game, I'm sorry to say, it's just kind of limited, especially compared to the Zelda series.

As for emotion, well, apparently you have played Twilight Princess (for more than ten minutes I hope). The range and colourfulness of characters in that game beats BG&E's any day IMO, but perhaps that's because I've been exposed to the latter's brand of French comic book stereotypes for too long.