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Maklo gone postal total posts: 471 since: Mar 2002	Aug 27, 03 at 7:22pm PLayTeSt
	from uk.playstation.com PlayStation Experience playtest: Beyond Good & Evil - Part 1 PlayStation 2 Oli Ladenburg 27 Aug 2003 We dip our toe into the lush, exotic gaming waters of Michel 'Rayman' Ancel's genre bending epic to bring you some exclusive first impressions. In an era of sequels, franchises and safe bet movie licences, Beyond Good & Evil is one of those rarest and most precious of creatures; a new and entirely original A-list game. The brainchild of Michel Ancel (as well as various other key Rayman team members), BG&E is ostensibly a third person adventure, but such a broad label does little justice to a game that's so brimming with innovation and good ideas. Having spent a full two hours with the game at Ubi Soft's Montpellier studio, we couldn't help coming away with the feeling that we'd barely scraped the surface of the game, but decided we'd share our rather magical experiences with it nonetheless. The action kicks off with a news report from the war-torn System 4, which is really just a bit of scene setting for BG&E's plot backdrop of intergalactic conflict and conspiracy. The action then cuts to heroine Jade, seen chilling out by the river near her home, the Southern Lighthouse Shelter, where she and her uncle offer refuge to children whose parents have gone missing during the war. It's your first taste of BG&E's visually rich and stylistic environments, but the tranquillity of the moment is soon shattered as the skies open up and giant meteors start to reign down. Jade runs to the lighthouse to activate the shield, only be to be curtly informed by a computerised voice that she doesn't have sufficient credit to do so. Things go from bad to worse as one of the meteors lands on a group of the orphaned kiddies, ploughing them into the ground beneath the lighthouse. The meteors then transform into strange alien creatures, trapping the kids inside. The cut scene transitions seamlessly into the game (both are powered by BG&E's powerful Jade engine), and we get our first taste of action. BG&E's combat system is simplicity itself; there's an auto-lock on feature that targets your nearest enemy, and a single 'X' button press executes various kicks and blows from Jade's staff. The left analog stick can be used to select a direction in which to attack, resulting in a simple but pleasing and fluid 360 degree attack system. We get to work on the weird alien / meteors, dispatching the first five or six with relative ease. Towards the end of the game's first combat scene, for no apparent reason, the music morphs into atmospheric choral noises and the action transitions to slow motion. There's no practical gameplay reason for this whatsoever, but it's another of those little stylistic touches that makes BG&E a rather special game. No sooner has Jade seen off the dozen or so creatures near the lighthouse, she's grabbed by a huge tentacle and dragged underground. What looks like a huge green eyeball with tentacles looms over her and starts speaking in strange tongues. Just when it looks like all is lost, enter Pey'j, who leaps down from a duct and comes to the rescue, creating a diversion. The creature drops Jade into a cage while it turns its attentions to Pey'j. Pey'j is Jade's uncle and companion for the majority of the game. Incidentally, he's also a talking pig. We're not entirely sure what the reasoning behind this slightly quirky design decision is, but it does afford the rest of the characters plenty of opportunities to crack bacon and pork product related jokes. But we digress. With Pey'j distracting the strange eye / tentacle creature, Jade has an opportunity to escape her cage. She does so by using the her special Dai-jo staff attack; by holding down the attack button, you can build up a devastating attack that'll quickly dispatch anything in its radius. Once Jade is freed from her cage, it's simply a case of launching special attack after special attack on the creature's single green eye to defeat it. On successfully slaying the tentacled eye monster, you're rewarded with a Pearl d'Aramis, which apparently can be used in exchange for goods and services at the Mummago Market. Very handy. -------------------
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