ar has come to the home of Jade, the green-lipsticked heroine of Beyond Good & Evil. Her morning meditation is interrupted by targeted meteors showering her lighthouse home. She heads out to investigate. Jade's first mate is a tough-talking, mechanically inclined pig named Pey'j. After one particularly strenuous battle, Pey'j cheers, "Not bad for a young girl and some old ham."
Jade's mission is twofold. First, she must find out who are the real oppressors of her home planet of Hillys: the invading alien DomZ or the Alpha Section mercenaries who patrol the streets and skies. (Or maybe Jade should be skeptical of the propaganda from the IRIS Network, the rebel group who ask her to take on a dangerous investigation.)
Secondly, Jade must earn money throughout the game as a photographer, cataloging new species for the Hillys Science Center. Throughout the watery world of Beyond Good & Evil, anime-inspired fauna dart in and out in front of her lens. Take a picture of such creatures as "Anemonia Mutabilis" and Jade will score enough points for more health-ups.
Jade can walk, run, crouch and fight with her weapon, a Dai-jo Stick. Her inventory includes money credits (saved to a card), mechanical parts, various detectors and health-ups. Players use Jade to roam through the warehouses, rooms, bars and repair shops that make up the world of Beyond Good & Evil.
The game also contains hidden-puzzle mini-missions, where Jade can find extra goodies. To get from place to place, or to join a quick race to earn extra cash, Jade pilots a small but impressive hovercraft, equipped with boosters and guns. As she drives through the Venice-like canals of town, the glowing, talking billboards remind her to trust only her Alpha Section protectors.
More exploring than fighting
So many games try to achieve what Beyond Good & Evil does flawlessly: hook the player in with a compelling and sophisticated story. Much of this success lies in the game's terrific cutscenes. They are fantastic—no small task in a time when cutscenes are generally painfully amateurish. In BG&E players learn important information from cutscenes (as well as from background dialogue).
Visually, BG&E is stunning, as when delicately spiky "Trilobites Saltans" float in front of Jade's camera. And rarely have human-animal hybrids—most of Jade's friends in BG&E—been so damn funny. Pey'j, in particular, is a crackup, with terrific voice work for his character.
Other secondary characters, like Rufus the shark, only reinforce the impression that the game makers must have been enjoying themselves while producing BG&E. As Jade leans in to chat up Rufus, for example, he covers a note on the table with his fin in order to keep her from discovering his secret code.
Clever touches like these keep BG&E from becoming too cutesy. The design of the game is bright, colorful and somewhat cartoonish. In an era when Grand Theft Auto and similar bleak environments top the best-seller chart, BG&E may fall by the wayside, thought by many to be a teen title.
But BG&E can be just about as creepy as any mature-rated title. The on-screen violence is absolutely minimal, but the underlying ideas—when is it ever good to be assigned to investigate disappearances at an old slaughterhouse?—give the game its unsettling edge.
Jade battles for a future free of war and authoritarianism in a story so specific that it won't allow for much replay action. But this one-time-through aspect is the only qualifier against BG&E, an otherwise outstanding adventure and exploration game.
Jet boots, hovercraft, conspiracy theories, well-written heroes and elaborate, humorous species classification—that's pretty much my gaming dream list right there.
— Jen
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