GregHowley.com

I finished playing a PC Game called Beyond Good & Evil not too long ago. I'd meant to write something here about it, but I found myself preoccupied with the whole Colorado thing.

The first thing I want to say about the game is that its title is a complete misnomer. I was unable to find any ethical conundrums or any overwhelming purpose which might be construed to be somehow above questions of morality. It's merely a catch phrase.

Yet despite the poor naming of the game, I quite enjoyed it. I'd tend to say that if you've been a fan of games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto, this might not be the game for you. But if you enjoyed the puzzles and ambience of Syberia, the mixed gun/melee combat and the foot/car chases of Enter the Matrix, and the creepy mystery despite the annoying camera angles of Resident Evil, then this is the game for you.

You play the part of Jade, a young woman on a planet called Hillys. Hillys is a futuristic society plagued by invasions from a race of alien abductors called the DomZ. (pronounced doms) Hillys itself is populated not only by humans, but by other races that have evolved not only from apes, but from goats, rhinos, sharks, and many other animals.

Jade is a photographer by profession, and lives in a lighthouse with the kindly pig-man who raised her, where they raise a number of orphan children and Jade struggles to earn enough money from her photography to pay the power bill for the energy shield that protects them from the DomZ. Good backstory, I'd say.

Without giving away too much, the story progresses from there, and Jade finds herself attempting to uncover a government conspiracy through photographic evidence. The device by which you take pictures works beautifully, and you can very soon obtain a zoom lens which not only makes photography easier, but functions as binoculars to survey an area and as a weapon targeting device. You can earn extra money along the way by selling photos, and the income is instantaneous, as the digital photos are transmitted from your camera and funds are electronically deposited into your account.

One of the things I liked most about the game is its variety. There are battles, in which Jade weilds her staff and sometimes has aid from a companion, and there are driving portions of the game, in which you need to pilot a hovercraft (and later a spaceship) to flee, pursue, fight, or earn first place in a race, jumping and shooting all the while. There are numerous puzzles, although they are seldom as conspicuous as those in Resident Evil or Syberia - generally the puzzles in Beyond Good & Evil take the form of a door which must be opened or a creature which must be bypassed. Sneaking is both plentiful and well-designed. If you've ever played Tenchu or Thief, you know how much fun it can be to sneak around, narrowly avoiding being spotted, and then run and hide once you are spotted. And there are even a couple side-games, such as the good ole shell game, and an odd air hockey variant.

The game designers did an excellent job making the game nonviolent. More often than not, you're battling DomZ, which are very nonhuman, and when you do battle humanoids, you're still using your staff, so not blood is ever spilt. Even when you sneak up behind someone, you bash their air-pack to disable them rather than assassinating them.

The PC control scheme took a bit of getting used to, but zooming with the mouse wheel and peeking around with the mouse became second nature before too long. The only annoyances were using the space bar to run and having the Q (use) key so close to the WASD (move) keys. Another minor annoyance was the inability to skip cinematics. Still, there were a few scenes in the game to which I kept returning to replay, including a phenomenal chase scene laced with cinematic cuts.