It’s always a shame when a game that breaks new ground and re-interprets old ground in fresh ways sells about three copies.
Beyond Good and Evil is one such game. This was a game that had it all: strong story with a lot of little twists, interesting and deep characters with a rich backstory for each, elegant combat, accessible racing sections, puzzle sections, minigames, and photography challenges (that’s right: you have to take pictures of every living species on the planet). On top of all that, they connected all of these things seamlessly. You could move from combat to racing to a cut scene in which we find out just a little bit more about the war between “us” and “them” and what’s behind it all and it all felt streamlined and fluid.
They didn’t know how to market it, of course. It had an actual strong female protagonist instead of a Strong Female Protagonist. It had a nuanced storyline involving government corruption. It contained a handful of notes from Journey To The West. It also had accessible fighting/racing/gameplay (which, sadly, translated to “unsatisfyingly easy for HARDCORE!!! gamers”). This game was an example of one of the few video games out there actually making itself an experience similar to watching a movie. The plot is railroaded by the game itself, but you are the protagonist that moves it from here to there.
A movie about a reporter who finds a giant government conspiracy and, with the help of her friends, saves the world. Kinda.
It’s been recently remastered for HD on both XBox Live and the PS3 Network. Get it there rather than paying the exorbitant prices for the PS2 or Original Xbox (or Gamecube) that Amazon is charging.
And that’s my recommendation for you this week.
I have very fond memories of that game. I played it over three straight days, never turning it off because the playstation was broken and couldn’t save games.
I got through to the very end, fighting the final boss, to the point where the chamber is filling with lava or acid or something, and the boss has become a giant floating head that you have to attack in a very specific sequence.
Then I burned through the entire thirty-something lives that I’d gained while hundred-percenting the game trying to find the proper sequence of attacks. When I finally died, I just turned the playstation off.
I looked it up a bit later. It turns out that the last bit of the sequence, you have to dodge, rather than attack. I had forgotten there was even a dodge button.