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I purchased a copy of Beyond Good and Evil after yet another visit to my notoriously bad influence, Vertice and his evil evil (so thumbs up! *g*) Sony Playstation..

Running on the same (I'm told) engine as smash-hit Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil shows huge potential with a few novel approaches to adventure gaming.

It has never even crossed my mind to base a game on photography and the challenges and (in this case) the dangers of the trade. Despite the somewhat misleading title, nothing describes a force bigger than good and evil than the truth. There's no black and white here, only full colour images captured in precarious places (I'm secretly hoping the game gives you an album of all the shots you've taken afterwards - what could be more memorable than your very own album of photos?)

Third-person action/adventure games need a first person view in some cases, to help you decide on your plan of action...Jade comes equipped with a zoom lens! Inspired!

A female character in the lead? It's been done over and over...or has it? Unlike heroes like Lara Croft or an amazon lass from any RPG, Jade is not very strong and has to outwit some of her bigger foes or rely on help from her somewhat unorthodox friends (used without permission from Vertice - well put dude!), in a world slightly more magical than even Persia (I didn't think it was possible either).

Beyond Good and Evil further outranks Prince of Persia by diversifying into a more classic "Go there, get that" approach, instead of a PoP's somewhat rigid storyline, making it more challenging and fun, especially for die-hard-find-everything players like me.

So what went wrong? Why is the game not selling as well as one would expect? Here's what I think:

The Prince of Persia gamepad edition was a brilliant move, creating a fanbase that could not be beat. So why oh why does it not support gamepad play? Controlling the camera with the mouse feels clumsy and is often frustrating, especially after the groundbreaking camera work in Prince.

The PC version seems a bit buggy too - I struggled to get it installed and to run (but that might be due to the budget edition of the game *hangs head in shame* it's been a long month and \\Cl4uss didn't help), plus the camera has some issues on higher resolutions when driving the hovercraft.

(Truth be told, I have not yet installed the patch (v1.01) yet, which might fix some of the camera issues).
*Update* - The patch fixes a lot of the hovercraft rendering issues, but still no gamepad :\

Despite these little things (and the huge gamepad thing *grumble*), I still look forward to Beyond Good and Evil after work, so All Evil recommends at least giving it a shot (a little photographer humour there..)!!

PS: Bad influences are necessary evils in everyone's lives...I myself am a very good bad influence on several people. Get yourself a bad influence today or miss out on a lot of fun ;)