Beyond Good & Evil and Character Development Through Gameplay

Beyond Good & Evil is a game I obtained with the help of a small retro gaming community based in Long Island. It was one of many Gamecube games I became interested in playing, appearing on almost every list of Gamecube hidden gems I read online. Obviously I had to get it, and now that I've played it, I must say that I am not disappointed. Unfortunately I had a large backlog of games to play at the time I finished Beyond Good & Evil's main story so I never had much of a chance to savor its sweet goodness, but the box art alone caught the attention of my friend as he browsed my collection the other day, stopping to say "oh you have this game??" to which I replied "Yes Dylan, I have this game." This one goes out to all the Dylans in the world.

Beyond Good & Evil - Nintendo Gamecube 

      So like I said, good ol' hidden gems on the Nintendo Gamecube. Strange as this may be for a hidden gem, it was actually developed by Ubisoft and released for multiple systems including the Gamecube. Beyond Good & Evil is critically acclaimed, but has never really escaped its status of "cult classic". Despite this, Beyond Good & Evil is seriously one of the best Gamecube games I've ever played and may even be one of the best video games of the Gamecube/PS2/XBOX generation. The game is filled with inspired characters, a gorgeous fantasy world brimming with life and depth complete with sky-whales, and a story that weaves its narrative and gameplay together harmoniously. 

       The gameplay is most reminiscent of that found in a Legend of Zelda game, perhaps if Ocarina of Time was only 12 hours long. Your character, Jade, traverses the small open hub world of planet Hillys in a linear sequence of events and checkpoints which all eventually lead to you navigating masterfully crafted dungeons consisting of rooms that require you to solve refreshingly unique puzzles, defeat enemies using an extremely tight combat system, or sneak around all stealth-like without being detected. In addition to the expertly built dungeons, there exists hours of optional side-quests and games to play on the side should one decide to explore Hillys a little further. Planet Hillys is made up of a small sea with several islands jutting up from it's surface. Jade uses her motorboat to quickly zip all around planet Hillys in order to get from objective to objective. But whether you're going for a quick stroll through the bustling town, or sailing from dungeon to dungeon, there is always incentive for you to stop and explore. Mini-games can be found by talking to different residents of the central city, optional boat races are not only a blast to participate in but reward you with money which you NEED, and let's not forget the pictures you can take. OH the PICTURES you can take....

     

What must be understood about Jade is that despite her ability to kick ass with a staff or sweet-talk her way into getting what she needs, she is first and foremost a photographer. During the game, Jade finds herself collaborating with an underground organization of vigilantes called ISIS which promises to give her money in exchange for photographs of wildlife. Whether it's to upgrade your boat, weapon, or to increase your max health, you NEED money in this game, and sending pictures to ISIS is the easiest and most fun way to get it. Like I said, ISIS is particularly interested in photographs of the wildlife on planet Hillys. As a result, if at any point during your sailing from place to place, you stumble upon an unfamiliar breed of fish, it's up to you to whip out the kodak and snap a picture. Same thing with strange plants found growing on dungeon walls, imprisoned and weaponized dogs found in enemy bases, even the animal-like pedestrians found strolling about town; as long as it is living, a picture of it can be exchanged for money. 

     The thing that makes the ability to take pictures so ingenious is that it keeps Jade humbled and believable as a character; she is a photographer - that's part of her lore - and in order to play as a photographer, YOU, the player, must become a photographer. You need to wait for the right moment to capture the best angle of a bird, you become excited when you see a strange creature lurking around in the distance. Despite her taking on the responsibilities of an adventurer she never wanted to become, Jade stays true to herself, because no matter how many enemies she defeats and lives she saves, she is still a photographer at heart, and because the utilization of this feature is something that is required in order to make money, which is required in order to make progress in the game, this detail from Jade's lore is kept at the forefront of her character development. In this way, it is GAMEPLAY that directly influences the player's perception of her. We don't learn about Jade through any cutscene or dialogue, we learn about Jade by becoming Jade. 

      

     What Beyond Good & Evil has to offer is a gaming experience that tells an excellent story through excellent gameplay. Too often nowadays do we find games either whose story exists solely for the sake of the gameplay or whose gameplay exists solely for the sake of the story, but Beyond Good & Evil splits it right down the middle, offering gameplay and story that exist in order to emphasize the best points of each other. I give this game a very serious recommendation to all video game fans who crave side-quests, strong characters, tight combat, and solid dungeon-crawling. In other words, if you've ever thought that you wouldn't mind seeing Legend of Zelda re-imagined where everything is run by alien technology instead of magic, then Beyond Good & Evil is exactly for you. 

MY FAVORITE GAMECUBE GAME

Fin.

Number 10 Favorite Gamecube Game

My tenth favorite Gamecube game!

Playground Series: This Shit Is Bananas

I've recently learned to stop apologizing. So EXCUSE my bitch ass for not posting for a bit.

P.N.03

Okay so you know how when a game comes out people are all like "wahhh imma go check IGN anf fuckong.. Gameinformersomeshit fuckin'...askn all ma frendzz an whatev see hoiw good the gmae is befo I spend moneuy err whatev" I say FUCK THAT. In order to know how good a game is, you have to play it yourself. And no game has taught me that lesson more thoroughly than P.N.03.

P.N.03 is a third-person shooter that gives off a classic arcade-like feel. You navigate through linear levels and just try to fucking kill everything in your path before they kill you. Once you reach the end of the level, you move on to the next level. The point of the game is to beat every level and once you do, you're expected to move onto the next difficulty. This game's concept is simple and during this day and age, it could appear to be outdated and stale. This game was reviewed poorly and was criticized for it's sloppy controls, small move-set, length, and gameplay. Well you know what I say? Wanna know what I think about these claims? I think FUCK. THAT. This game is AWESOME. It's so frustratingly difficult, but rewarding and even though it only takes you 2 hours to beat the story on Easy mode, it will take you a lot longer than 2 hours to earn the ultimate prize.

So we gotta talk about all the different aspects of the game that make it what it is. Like I said, P.N.03 is pretty much a level-based action game. You start in one "room", kill all of the enemies, then move onto the next room. Once you complete every room, the level ends and you are pushed to the next one. Easy right? NO. So first of all, what you need to understand in order to play this game is that even though, yes, it is a shooter, there is only 1 or 2 buttons that make you shoot. You got the A button, which unleashes the rage of your trusty Palm Shot, and different combinations of the D-pad buttons + A for your strongest attacks. Knowing when to use your 2 different shots is important but what is even more important is knowing that every other button, including, B, L, R, LL, RR, Z and Y are all different buttons that let you dodge in different ways. The point is that health and energy necessary to charge your strongest attacks is scarce and if you fuck up, the game is not going to forgive you. Every single bit of your health counts so the skill you need to master in order to beat this game is not shooting the enemies, rather it is dodging the enemies, because you better believe that if you're trying to kill these enemies, then they are trying to kill you.
 
Imagine each room is like a spacious, in-door paintball arena. There are sections of the room where you are out in the open, as well as sections where you can jump and duck behind things. Using the environment in order effectively avoid the enemy onslaught while picking off each enemy one by one is critical in order to beat, or even play this game. The incentive to avoiding every single bullet shot at you, in addition to not dying, is the fact that the game awards you a certain amount of points each time you complete a room, and then gives you a nice bonus each time you complete a level. Wow points? Like fuckin....Super Mario Bros. or some shit? Yeah points. Obviously, whenever someone hears the word "points", they think of older games. Points, and trying to achieve the greatest amount of them, is a personal goal. In Mario Bros, you aren't rewarded for getting a high score with some kinda fuckin power up or something, you were just supposed to feel good about getting more points than ya friends. P.N.03 tries to rekindle that desire to snag the most points and does it flawlessly.....not satisfied are you? Okay, you got me. P.N.03 does definitely give you incentive to earn points, but not in order to fulfill any video game goal, but to fulfill you sexual goals. Yup I said it. So lemme explain this shit. You see the points given to you at the end of each room and level is the currency in P.N.03. You can exchange the points you've earned in order to upgrade your suit, increase your health, or buy different suits. The specs of your suit, predictably, affect how quickly you are able to vanquish enemies during levels, thus making it easier for you to beat the game faster. The amount of points earned at the end of each room is determined by how quickly you completed the room, as well as how much damage you took. Then the bonus at the end of the level is determined by your average performance during each room. So where is the sex? Well what if I told you that the character you play as was a woman? What if I said she was curvy? and sexy? What if I said that while you're standing there idle on the screen, and pretty much whenever she is not jumping or rolling around, she is shaking her ass right in your face? What if I said that if you earned a fuckload of points over time, and purchased every suit, and upgraded every suit, and completed the game, that you would get the final suit: Vanessa in her underwear. Yeah I'm a fucking pig, whatever. It's funny! Think about it: the ultimate, final suit as a reward for beating the game, leaving no stone unturned and no enemy alive, is just porn. It's amazing and kicks the shit out of earning any Trophy nowadays.

This game has an insane learning curve, but it's not hard, it's just untraditional. I know when I used to play Halo 3 with my brother, I would head out and if I got shot, fucking, whatever I didn't care. You just run away, get your health back automatically and then you can go out and shoot again (I am not good at Halo). In P.N.03, if you just run out there and not give a shit, then you're gonna die in like, actually 5 seconds. You have to be stealthy and attentive. You have to learn how to use all of your different dodging techniques in order to avoid fucking EVERYTHING. I remember I definitely just ran out into the open field first thing when I turned on this game and I got pwned. I looked at the screen and I was like "...ffffuckn whaaa??" So I reconsidered my strategy, and learned how to play the game the right way. Ultimately, the fact that this shooter was so different than anything I had ever played before gave me confidence in games that try to teach an old dog new tricks. Not every game can do it, but some, very few, can. And among those games that successfully tackle familiar game genres in untraditional ways is, in my opinion, P.N.03.

I Put This Down, Then Picked It Up Again

I put this down, then picked it up again
because it's good enough for one more round.
I put this down, then picked it up again
thought it would be better this time around.
I put this down!

Nothing like a Tubthumping reference to start a new line of posts.

Anyway, I Put This Down will be yet another short archetype of posts. Each IPTD post will be a brief discussion of my thoughts of a game that I played for a bit, but didn't finish immediately. The pattern for these games will be the following: I bought it, played it, put it down, forgot about it, picked it up again. The discussion will take place after I pick it up and start playing it again. Who knows what will happen the second time around?

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

The Prince of Persia titles have exhibited a new form of platforming/adventure games ever since their original
conceptualization. In these games, you play as the Prince of Persia himself who has decided that the best way to save Persia from the rule of an evil king is to run around a bit, jump off a few walls, and kill some bad guys. Fair enough. These games are praised for their ability to combine parkour-like skillsets with puzzle-solving, and dungeon-crawling mechanics. In addition to all of the moves that I wish I could do in real-life, the prince also uncovers a dagger whose hilt stores the sands of time. Releasing the sands of time from the dagger reverses the flow of time. This ability can be used during gameplay in a way that is exactly like re-winding an old VHS tape (speaking of old reality...). Pressing R will not only employ the power of the most ridiculous but still awesome backwards WOOSHing sound effects, but will bring the prince back in time for up to about 5 seconds real-time. So that's what we have for us today - a parkour prince and a dagger that can reverse the flow of time.

Of course, I am writing as if I intend to belittle the game - I don't. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time really is a fun game. The controls, outdated as they are, are solid, and although the camera makes me want to die, the ability to reverse the flow of time in order to undo your mistakes is compensation enough. So the 3 big questions are the following:
Why did I put this game down?
Why did I pick it up again?
What do I think of it the second time around?

I did just admit that I thought this game was fun, because I do - I wouldn't lie to you guys. But I put this game down a long, long time ago because I thought it fell into a trap that Mirror's Edge introduced me to, but wound up existing for a long time before that. You see, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is really 3 different styles of gameplay arranged separately on 1 disc. This game is exactly 33% parkour, 33% puzzle-solving, 33% hack-and-slash combat, and 1% synergy (this proto-discovery was realized by my friend Dylan = credit where credit is due). What is unique to the P.O.P. series is the parkour-extreme-platforming so I bought this game (my first Prince of Persia game) thinking that it was going to be about 90% parkour and 10% wishing I was still doing parkour. The trap that this game falls into most likely stems from the developers thinking that the parkour parts were awesome, but the princes' skillset weren't large enough to create a game of 100% parkour without it starting to feel repetitive after about 2 hours. So what they did was create additional gameplay styles that included combat, by throwing in some beat 'em up sections which consisted of the slaying of multiple waves of enemies until everyone except you is dead. Fine. But what happens with these "solutions" sometimes is that the very remedy used to cure repetitive gameplay becomes repetitive. So let me be more specific to this title:
Problem: The game would be boring and repetitive as shit if ALL you did was parkour.
Solution: Add more game mechanics, like fighting and puzzle-solving, in order to prevent the parkour from getting stale.
New Problem: Fighting and Puzzle-Solving get stale and supersaturate the game to the point where I miss the parkour. #ijustlearnedhowtobold

So I really really loved the parkour parts of the game, but the combat sections were sloppy, and the puzzle-solving sections were challenging, but not fun, and were really more annoying than anything, as they hindered my ability to throw myself off of buildings and stuff. I put Prince of Persia: Sands of Time down because I couldn't handle how not fun the puzzle-sections were. All I wanted to do was some wall-runs and some jumping off of stuff, but apparently Sonic The Hedgehog is still my best bet for that desire.

Probably 18 months passed and I decided to see what would happen if I popped that disc back into the cube again. Perhaps, I thought, my new found video-game wisdom would aid in my future appreciation of what is usually considered to be, like, the 5th best Gamecube game ever. Resuming my old file, I immediately became stuck in a parkour portion that only a youtube video walk-through could help me out of, and then was INSTANTLY thrown into the most annoying puzzle-section I had yet to behold. I cleared it after about a half hour of fucking falling like an idiot, and pretty much just said "fuck it" after that. Prince of Persia has yet to see the world outside of its since then. Being several hours into it, I feel like I have played it enough in order to decide that I have seen what I needed to see.

On a side note, I understand that the game took a different approach to the video game soundtrack by...well...not having one, but it didn't work. If I am going to literally be watching myself fuck up, and be forced to watch myself fuck up in reverse slow-mo, then imma need some tunes to keep me going. And that's all I have to say about that.

Verdict:
I put this down, then picked it up again, and threw it back to the ground
where it stayed down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc