So I bought Beyond Good & Evil (and a new controller)

Since my Dualshock 2 is crap and this game is a bitch that won't accept a Dualshock 1, I had to buy a new controller.

Anyway, a lot of shit happened at the start of this game. Some general was giving a speech or something, but these things called Domz invaded the planet. Then we cuy to our hero for the game, Jade. Meditating with some weird goat child or something. She's a reporter who also runs what is apparently a lighthouse and an orphanage. All these meteors start crashing down and these weird things come out that absorb the children. But you beat them up and the children inside are saved so that's okay.

Then these weird tentacles pull you into the ground and this big eye starts talking to you and all that weird shit. But then a pigman jumps in to save you. That's Peyj. He's a pig man. So you fight the eye thing and then the eye turns into a pearl, which you can used to buy stuff.

After all that you need to earn some to restore electricity to the lighthouse, so Jade gets our her all-purpose-analyzer-projector-scanner thingy, which contains a holographic hispanic homosexual for some reason, and he explains that scientists are trying to make an inventory of every species on the planet, and will pay me, as a reporter, for pictures of animals.

So about 10 minutes in, the fighting mechanics are established, the main collectibles are established, the characters are established... All that's is THE FUCKING STORY. As intros go it wasn't very informative. But I assume that will come soon enough. It's only a quick action platformer type game after all.

And now I'm at a garage run by Jamaican rhinos buying a new motor for my hovercraft.

I suspect the pig to be evil

He does seem a bit shifty.

Actually, I might leave this for now since my urge to play Dark Chronicle again is pretty strong.

Well, after I bought a new engine for the craft, some giant worm thing attacked, but I shot it down. I got a message from some guy saying there was a job for me on Black Isle. He wants me to take a picture of some Domz creatures or something. I had a sail by a lot of interesting looking places to there, which I hope I get to explore at some point.

Oh, and the camera bugs the crap out of me. I like to have the X axis normal and the Y axis inverted, but in this game you can only have them both normal or both inverted, so I'm screwed either way.

Well, turns out that little mission was just some cover thingy to recruit me to a rebel force. Didn't follow the big speech exactly, but I think that the Domz actually invaded the planet ages ago and took the guise of the Alpha Section, who are the ones pretending to fight off the on going invasion to placate the populous. Or something, it was a complicated speech.

If this was Dragon Quest, I'd probably be 15 hours in by now with all the exposition that's gone on.

The controls are a bit stiff too.

Wow, I guess Ubisoft actually can do a decent job at customer relations. The HD version of this released yesterday on PSN for £12 and everyone bitched because it was nearly twice the XBLA price, and now it's dropped to £8. £6.39 with the PS+ discount. I guess I'll be buying it now, and getting around to it whenever.

Right, I'm going to finish this damn game if it's the last thing I do. I'm playing the HD version and I'm up to where I was previously.

This bloke wants to go to Acuda Bar and meet a man named Peepers. To get there I have to get past some kind of defense robot. To do that I need a Nutrilizer Cannon. To get that I need a few more pearls. To get them, I think I need to buy a pearl detector from Ming Tzu's. And I have no idea where that is at the moment.

Got to the Akuda Bar. I can't go to Ming Tzu's yet it seems. Some asshole robots are blocking off parts of the city.

The bar is run by a cow-man is shades. He told me about some ancient treasure in the volcano's crater. I guess I'll get to that later, since this is the first I've heard of the volcano. Met a... I don't know what he is, called Francis. He'll give me a pearl if I can beat him at an air hockey mini-game. Haven't won yet. I'll come back later.

This weird couple wouldn't talk to me. One of them was a shark. He boasted about how fast his grandpa could eat kids. Weirdo.

havee you got the ship then?

You sould just go nuts and explore the map, theres a cave with stuff in it i think its unmarked IIRC.

Yeah, I got a good amount of pearls and the nutrilizer before I even got to the factory. I love this game and need to play it some more.

Eh, I'll just do what I need to go through the story.

I met Peepers. He made me play that find-the-ball-under-the-cup game and gave me special code to get into the IRIS headquarters. IRIS thinks that the Domz and Alpha Sections are working together to create chaos so they can kidnap people without being noticed. Then they take them to the moon, for some reason.

I have to find out what's going on and expose the truth! Because that's what reporters do! I'm like Hunter S. Thompson but with boobs and not crazy.

FUCK YOU FRANCIS! ACTING ALL CRAP FOR THE FIRST ROUND AND THEN KICKING MY ASS!

Should I totally get this? I rented it once years ago on the ps2, but I didn't play it much.

I've been wondering if I should get it for a while now. I kept debating with myself whether I should get this or Undead Nightmare. Hell, I bloody waited too long to make a decision and that Rockstar sale(which tipped the scales slightly in UN's favour at the time) from over a week back or so ended, so now I'm back to square one.

SOK wrote:

I've been wondering if I should get it for a while now. I kept debating with myself whether I should get this or Undead Nightmare.

I like how I didn't buy either of them.

Anyway, given that this was one of the PS+ freebies, I finally decided to nab and play it. All in all, the experience was rather fun, but I as I progressed, I got the feeling that this game was a bit rushed in production and that it could have been a fair bit longer and more polished had it received the extra time. The controls can be a bit unintuitive, the camera likes to be a spaz, and the combat didn't feel all that smooth. It's the exploration, mixture of stealth elements, the espionage, variety of gameplay and atmosphere that saves it.

Another sign of a slightly rushed production is the story presentation and how various characters are handled. It feels like there's a whole bunch of missing moments to breath some interesting interactions between Jade and various supporting members. Y'know those children our heroine and her Pig uncle looked after at that lighthouse? Insanely INSIGNIFICANT in the grand scheme of things. They contribute almost nothing to the story at all, and there are never any scenes with them. They're just established as orphans you took care of before you leave the starting area, and that's it.

Spoiler:

A lot of characters felt similarly. Like there could have been more to them than what little we got. And that's pretty much the same feeling felt with the rest of the game. Interesting concepts and game elements, but one is left hungry for far more. So I guess we'll just have to wait for the sequel (that is totally not still in development hell, you guyz) to see that potential fully realized.