Beyond Good & Evil - Reviews
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Private

60%PC

Beyond Good & Evil is one of the *cult classics* I knew nothing about and jumped into blind. On the whole, I enjoyed my time with this game. I loved the colorful, multicultural and cartoonish aesthetic as backdrop against an oppressive regime. There's excellent variety throughout, constantly switching between exploration, combat, stealth, puzzles, and narrative moments. It's one of those rare games that attempts to break up it's gameplay sections with a lot of different things without feeling like it half assed any of them. Except maybe the stealth sections, those were pretty poor.

But unfortunately each of it's elements don't have much depth. The combat is extremely simple, there are a few variations of the combos but nothing that you need to focus on, most of the game can be beaten by button mashing. The stealth is linear and is not system based, you need to do a very specific thing to get past enemies. The puzzles are fine, but only better than the average puzzle because the standard for that sort of thing is super low, there's nothing that engaging here. If you are new to video games some of this might be novel, but it's all pretty well worn ground. The photography minigame is fun, but the mid and late game shower you with so many pearls it's hardly worth it.

The first major level had me somewhat interested, in both the story and the progression of the mechanics. But I wasn't really taken by anything that came after. I like some of the themes to the story, but it's just so awkwardly told. I wasn't interested in any of the characters in a serious way, and the general plot is pretty generic. Is the tone supposed to be campy? I didn't get it. It's paced well enough, but there's so much missing for me to get invested.

Right after a cutscene where Jade admitted doubts about the claims of the Alpha Sections being evil (the first meeting at Iris) I went to talk to another NPC in the bar. His whole family had been kidnapped by the Alpha sections and Jade consoled him, but didn't react to this situation as evidence against the Alpha sections. This disconnect sort of turned me off taking the story seriously, I guess it's just a thing for kids. I mean hell, one the major devices the game uses to motivate Jade are the kids and Pey'j. The former of which have almost no characterization and the latter of which is missing for most of the game.

All in all it's a decent game. It excels in variety and charm. But for me, I wasn't that taken by the *charm* (despite "propaganda!" being a banger). And the variety was good for it's pacing, but I was rarely engaged in the moment. The first hour or so was great, but it didn't really build to anything. The gameplay stayed simple and the story was uninteresting to me.

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Baraz

80%PC

21h 30m Played

For an old game (2003), the visuals and animations are rather nice, even on a 1080p, and can work on Windows 10 without needing to tweak the files (unlike many old games on Steam).* As the new one should come out in the following years, and looks great, I wanted to experience the original.

Gameplay / Story (I give zero spoilers nor even a hint)

You play a young reporter and will investigate and search for various things ... I will not spoil. It is a nice heroic linear adventure, with a few optional minigames and side activities like races. Gameplay has both combat (melee and vehicles), and also stealth. There are many "environmental puzzles" like press the right button, notice how the guards move/turn to bypass, search for a the secret passage, etc. You will have one companion most of the times.

Only one thing is badly designed

While moving in one direction, the camera is almost always aiming elsewhere and changing angles quickly, which made me dizzy quite often. All-around fine game, but the viewpoint of your character is very often set automatically in a direction chosen by the game, at lightning speed, and not always where you are aiming or heading. For example, it might pivot 180 degrees instantly to face an enemy while you are trying to move away. It was very confusing and I even was seasick often to the point of taking breaks (which I never feel in games).

In vehicles, I often switched to first person (camera is then fully controlled) to avoid feeling sick.

Time

Among over 600 players polled on the web site HowLongToBeat, the average time is 11 hours, up to about 20 hours. I found and obtained *everything*, but it took me about 20 hours.

* Technical (PC) tips

It works fine "out-of-the-box", but you can improve your experience with three very simple info...

a) The settings (resolution, keybinds, graphics, etc.) are not in-game, but done via an application in the game folder, called SettingsApplication.exe.

b) Cap to 60 FPS (via SettingsApplications or GPU Control Panel). Higher FPS will desync cutscenes.

c) For better visuals, with a modern GPU, set all the graphical compatiblity options ON (off means you remove certain graphic features to improve performance or compatiblity). The game's anti-aliasing also greatly improves the visuals. Turn some off *only* if you experience graphical issues. I found the visuals noticeably nicer with ALL the graphical features on (with a GTX 1660TI).

d) To ensure stability, set the game exe to Windows XP SP3 compatiblity. I had zero crashes in over 20 hours.

- Baraz on Steam :

https://steamcommunity.com/id/baraz/recommended/15130

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Chronoja

80%PC

8h 30m Played

This review is based on my first replay of this game, about 5 years after the first playthrough.

The first time I played this game I enjoyed it quite a bit but over time I had forgotten quite a bit about it, and as with any game of this cult status a memory of it is always subject to being nostalgia or the like. I didn't think that would be the case with having played it relatively recently but you never know. Thankfully my memory was largely in tact because I enjoyed this game just as much on the 2nd playthrough.

At its core it's just a very creative 3rd person action / stealth game, one that prioritises the stealth aspect more than the action. You play as Jade, one of gamings highly regarded female protagonists as she infiltrates various locations with the objective of photographing and revealing corruption within governmental institutes. It's a very dark story for something that is wrapped up in a very kid friendly aesthetic, where humanoid animals walk around and photographing wildlife is a big part of the game.

It all works together though and lends the game a real mystery and imagination to it. The only real places the game falters is on archaic game design. A poor camera contributes mostly to this, making things more annoying than they should be, but overall the game isn't particularly difficult, a lot of invisible barriers preventing you from making mistakes while platforming etc. The only real major difficulty spike is at the last boss again mostly due to controls.

It's a short-ish game, 8 or so hours doing pretty much all optional stuff and exploratory backtracking, if you were to beeline to the main objectives you could complete this in nearly no time at all, which could be seen as either a negative or a positive, if you don't like it you don't have to stick with it for long.

Would I recommend this? absolutely, a game that has earned its cult status, suffering a few problems here and there but nothing severe enough to drag it down too much.