RANDOM LETTER

First, I'd like to promote the website:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com


No, I'm not published on it, it's just a very fine online video game magazine that appeals to a more mature (i.e. old enough to remember the Atari's lame version of Pac-Man) audience. It also includes the brilliantly vulgar 'Zero Punctuation' shorts that I'm so fond of. Go ahead, take a look, and subscribe. It doesn't cost anything, it's weekly, and it's a lot of fun.

I recently had to send them a letter though, after a long and insanely worshipful article in issue #139 about 'Beyond Good and Evil'. Like so many articles, it was reviewed as a dramatic, political thriller set in a disutopian future.

My view of the game differs a bit, leading to this:

...


Dear Escapist Magazine,


I wish I could find the game 'Beyond Good and Evil' that everyone's talking about.

I found a game with the same name and cover, but I can't shake the feeling that we're somehow playing two completely different games.

People I know to be both reasonable and intelligent, describe a game set in a stark, Orwellian future, where a corrupt government runs a secret underground slave ring, and only a single brave, if somewhat morally ambiguous reporter can bring the truth to the oppressed masses.

Wonderful! I'm sold! I grab it, pop the game in, and get 'Jax and Daxter'.

Seriously, this game is Jax and Daxter. Did you play the sequel, J&D 2? There is no significant difference.

You begin to get a sense of the taught political drama...then funny animal people show up...and aliens...and platform jumping...and collecting big pearls to spend on upgrades...and what the hell?

I'm not saying that 'Beyond Good and Evil' is a bad game, but why do people keep selling it as it's the long awaited sequel '1985'? It's a simple, typical adventure game. At best it's competent, and although it does try to be political, 'Du Ex' did it better.

I think there are three reasons some reviewers give it the 'Psychonauts' treatment, even though it's not really deserved:

1. Reviewers of all types are enamored with the 'renegade reporter' character, and all secretly wish they were ducking the 'man', revealing corruption, and receiving the praise and worship that tattletales never seem to receive in real life.

2. The time was right to have a game that fit the 'reporter defeats corrupt government' mold. It didn't seem to matter much that although the plot followed this theme, the actual environment, characters and play were more similar to a 'Spyro' game than a drama. They wanted a drama, marketed it as a drama, reviewed it as a drama and then sold it as a drama. What people got was a slightly serious, yet mostly silly adventure game. Her sidekick is a giant talking pig-man, for crying out loud. Ever notice the reviews never mention that?

3. As Yahtzee once mentioned in a review, many games try to do too much, and wind up doing nothing well. It almost seems like the 'kiddie', 'fun' and 'collect all the magic jelly beans' elements were added as an afterthought, to please the mass market. Instead, it merely alienated and confused the players that expected a serious, political thriller.

Remember Titan A.E.? It was a sci-fi cartoon that tried to please both adults and kids alike. Ultimately it did neither. The kids went and saw Tarzan (Jax and Daxter, Spyro), and the adults went and saw non-cartoon movies (Halo, Half-life, Fable and such).

All that was left were the slightly confused geeks sitting alone in the dark, wondering if they accidentally wandered into the wrong theater.

Take care,

Robert Max Freeman