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[dark10x]

I used to compare the hell out of games back then and I found that the XBOX version was tops.

Technically, the PC version looks better than all of the console releases, but it has a lot of problems which keep it from taking the lead. The XBOX version offers the best visuals at a decent framerate. The GC version is a bit more unstable in the framerate department and doesn't look quite as nice (also lacks 480p). The PS2 version is trash. Avoid.

Honestly, the GC or XBOX versions should fit the bill just fine. No version of the game offers perfect performance (outside of the PC version).

This wasn't the case with other Ubi games, however. The GC versions of the PoP games, for instance, were FAR AND AWAY the worst (with even the PS2 versions standing above them).

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

-Gameplay -- this is not "stealth". Stealth is where you avoid things, or get punished. This is puzzle-rooms. Look at room. Solve puzzle in room. Go to next room. Solve puzzle in room. Yes, often that puzzle involves keeping away from enemies, but "stealth" it is not in anyone's wildest dreams... no game where all you have to do to escape from the guards is run back into the last hallway (in the linearly-laid-out dungeon), hide in the conveniently located dead-end drainage pipe in that hall between rooms, wait for the enemy to shoot at the wall for a few seconds, and try again, has "stealth". Just like with the story, the simplicity of this system makes it much less interesting than such things are in better games. Play Thief. Or even Lost Vikings, in the 'puzzle/adventure' category (if you ditch the ridiculous 'stealth' label)... now that was a great game...

Wait, the gameplay is bad because you don't think that they did stealth, a relatively small part of the game, right?

 

[A Black Falcon]

Wait, the gameplay is bad because you don't think that they did stealth, a relatively small part of the game, right?

Okay, that paragraph is lacking, it should have more to mention things like the overworld (nice, but my PC chokes...)... the city I mentioned, when talking about the story and my issues with the lacking believability in the gameworld. The dungeons are certainly the most fun part of the game though... they just aren't remotely difficult (Best way to beat a hard enemy: die! It'll restore you to life in the hallway in front of that room with more health than you probably entered the room with! Way to remove any sense of tension in the battles... that they're still fun says something about good design. Flawed design, but good.) and are not stealth. Important things to note.

Stealth isn't just a small part of the game, the dungeons are centered around a linear sequence of puzzles where you have to figure out how to get through a room without being detected. It's one of the game's central game mechanics. It's just that that's not really stealth the way it would be in a real stealth game... it's puzzles, like, as I said, a Lost Vikings. "Stealth" is a massive misnomer for what you have here... and I didn't say bad, either... I said that if you look at the reviews and hype and stuff it was claimed to be stealth, or something like it, and it's not. It's Zelda-inspired dungeoning. A good model to be sure, but not exactly one based on stealth games, and it shows... but like many things, the game can't quite agree about what it should be. The elements of depth in the game are just enough to confuse and make it seem like it's a deeper game than it is... something that many people seem to have taken as a good thing and a model, but which just annoyed me. Like the protesters in town... touch of complexity to show growing discontent in the government, or another sign of how the game tries for some complexity but fails to make it believable enough to completely convince? I just couldn't turn off my sense of 'this isn't believable'... there's just enough story to try, but it's just simple enough to fall short. Games are usually best when they try to do one thing right instead of doing a lot of things not quite as well, and this game is no exception...

This, I'd say, would be the alternative view:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6120427/index.html (from this amazing gamespot article about stories in games from last year)

Ken Levine:


...

Again, for me it's rarely story per se, but the unique moments of gameplay storytelling. I loved the beginning of Beyond Good and Evil and how they defined Jade's character. You meet her by seeing her environment. She's living under an alien dictatorship, and she's built her home into a makeshift orphanage. As you walk around her house you see why she's a hero, how much the kids love her and why her life is important. By the time any real gameplay happens, you want to protect her, you want to help her succeed.

And the whole thing is done with almost no actual dialogue.

Games can definitely tell amazing stories with minimal dialogue -- see Zelda: Link's Awakening (just brilliant all the way through), parts of Zelda: The Wind Waker (sunken Hyrule, the end of the game, some other parts...), Ico... I just can't get myself to say that BG&E really deserves to be on that list. Oh well...

Technically, the PC version looks better than all of the console releases, but it has a lot of problems which keep it from taking the lead. The XBOX version offers the best visuals at a decent framerate. The GC version is a bit more unstable in the framerate department and doesn't look quite as nice (also lacks 480p). The PS2 version is trash. Avoid.

The wide array of serious problems with the PC version should outweigh by far any improved graphics it's got... broken keyboard-and-mouse-only controls, poor performance relative to the graphics it's doing, bugs, etc... I have a good number of PC ports of console games, and while sometimes they can be done badly, it is possible to do them quite well too. Controls are an integral part of that. About the only PC port of a console game that I can think of that had no gamepad support but still played great is Oni... and that game is ... disliked ... by a lot of people... (though I definitely liked it) Ubisoft just had no excuse. They ported all three Rayman games to PC -- I have them, Rayman 2's awesomeness is part of why I wanted BG&E -- and those all have gamepad support, including dual analog support for Rayman 3

 

[dark10x]

The wide array of serious problems with the PC version should outweigh by far any improved graphics it's got... broken keyboard-and-mouse-only controls, poor performance relative to the graphics it's doing, bugs, etc... I have a good number of PC ports of console games, and while sometimes they can be done badly, it is possible to do them quite well too. Controls are an integral part of that. About the only PC port of a console game that I can think of that had no gamepad support but still played great is Oni... and that game is ... disliked ... by a lot of people... (though I definitely liked it) Ubisoft just had no excuse. They ported all three Rayman games to PC -- I have them, Rayman 2's awesomeness is part of why I wanted BG&E -- and those all have gamepad support, including dual analog support for Rayman 3

I should note that you can completely solve the control problems simply through the use of Joy2Key. The utility isn't the easiest to use, unfortunately, but once you learn it (very useful for many things) you can perfectly duplicate the console controls on any gamepad.

 

[Naked Snake]

Non-anamorphic widescreen FTL.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Non-anamorphic widescreen FTL.

yeah tell me about it....

I have the Xbox version BTW, 5.1 plus 480p FTW though


.......though it still isn't BC >_<

 

[Great Rumbler]

Really, it could have been great... with an interesting sci-fi story about aliens controlling a government and forcing policies bad for them on them by creating an other 'evil alien threat' that could have been done well... but the way it is done here, it simply does not achieve that. It needs less cartoony touches and more believable, complex plot... well, either that or it needs to drop all pretentions of depth and admit that it is the simple game that it is... one or the other. Being most of the way towards one end while making vague attempts at times to be on the other side does not work. (Such as the game's name... using the name of a Nietzsche book for a work so simplistic and utterly unrelated to anything he ever thought of is incredibly insulting to his work...)

If you want a serious, non-cartoony scifi world just play Metal Gear Solid [any one will do]. It's not supposed to be all that serious. It has a main character who's a humanoid PIG, for goodness sake!! It's more about creating an enviroment/characters/story that's interesting, and it does that. And most of your gripes about things that don't make sense about the story are explained by the ending, as I've told you several times before.

-Story -- simplistic, predictable, juvenile. They went a little bit of the way towards creating an interesting world, but beat you over the head with the message (yes, I get it, the government uses propaganda to control its people! ... if propaganda was really like that, it'd never be believed... it's a simple cartoon charicature of a government propaganda campaign...) and really put very little depth into the thing... once in a while the game tries to be more, and have true depth and an interesting, unique plot, but then it decends back into its normal simple conventions, and you realize that the potential the game has is not even close to being realized. The characters lack depth and are not very interesting, beyond the basic action/adventure kind of way (the praise this game gets leads you to believe that it is something more than just a typical action/adventure/RPG, but it really isn't, sadly...)... character development? Um, not much. Oh yes, and the Plot... Very simplistic and full of massive plot holes created by its very simplicity.

Hey, why don't you finish the game first before you bash the story?

 

[A Black Falcon]

I should note that you can completely solve the control problems simply through the use of Joy2Key. The utility isn't the easiest to use, unfortunately, but once you learn it (very useful for many things) you can perfectly duplicate the console controls on any gamepad.

Unless the game supports analog axis controls for movement, which I don't think it does, that won't help one bit. It'll just map the digital movement controls onto an analog gamepad.

Anyway, I have a Saitek P880. It's got keyboard mapping software... I remember trying to use it for this game. Unfortunately, mapping the arrow keys to a d-pad just doesn't quite work... the diagonals don't work properly, it doesn't quite control the way it should, etc...

*tries to run BG&E settings application to check* How nice, it says that EAX isn't properly installed and then crashes... I remember having issues getting the game and settings application to run correctly, but not that one. I guess my soundcard drivers aren't properly installed again. Oh well...

Hey, why don't you finish the game first before you bash the story?

If there is a bug in the game that prevents me from getting some items that I really could use, and the story as far as I got was as uninteresting as I've described many times, why should I finish it? Why should I expect anything to change when everything about the game (including reviews, I believe) says that it won't really? As I've said before, some late attempt to explain away some of the flaws just makes it more obvious how the game is split between trying to be fully cartoonish and trying to be a realistic game and doesn't get rid of the problem.

If you want a serious, non-cartoony scifi world just play Metal Gear Solid [any one will do]. It's not supposed to be all that serious. It has a main character who's a humanoid PIG, for goodness sake!! It's more about creating an enviroment/characters/story that's interesting, and it does that. And most of your gripes about things that don't make sense about the story are explained by the ending, as I've told you several times before.

It doesn't have to be completely serious, as I said, it just has to be consistent and follow its own rules...

 

[Speevy]

The Xbox version seemed fine to me, but I've never played the other ones.

 

[BocoDragon]

NICE! The family I'm staying with just let me have their copy of BG&E..... it's an excellent game. It reminds me of old LucasArts titles, with a touch of Zelda of course

As I've said before, some late attempt to explain away some of the flaws just makes it more obvious how the game is split between trying to be fully cartoonish and trying to be a realistic game and doesn't get rid of the problem.

Hangups much?

 

[plagiarize]

i bought the cube version because of what ancel said, and was shocked to find out that unlike the ps2 and xbox versions it lacked prog scan.

i've since modded my cube, and i can play it now in prog scan... but yeah, it's a BIG thing to keep in mind for some people.

 

[Tadaima]

Because of the controls.

 

[jetpacks was yes]

I should note that you can completely solve the control problems simply through the use of Joy2Key. The utility isn't the easiest to use, unfortunately, but once you learn it (very useful for many things) you can perfectly duplicate the console controls on any gamepad.

You can't duplicate the analogue movement and camera though, can you?

 

[Fantasmo]

PC version with mouse/keyboard does not support inverted look. It says it does but it doesn't work properly and a fix was never made.

 

[[Nintex]]

Ancel developed it for the cube and then ported it to PS2 and Xbox, there is your answer.

 

[dark10x]

The PS2 version is fine if you're not comparing it to other platforms, sheesh. Slowdown is hardly game-ruining, especially when the game in question is as good as BG&E.

I suppose it's not game ruining, but it's choppy enough that I can't imagine anyone selecting the PS2 version unless it was their ONLY option. I purchased it for PS2 once simply because I wanted to play it and the PS2 version was first to market. I ended up returning it and grabbing the XBOX version when it was finally released. There was no reason for it to be so choppy.

You can't duplicate the analogue movement and camera though, can you?

You can duplicate analog camera movement, but I can't recall analog motion. I'm not sure it was even required for the game (as sneaking used its own toggle button).

Dont know if its been said yet but Xbox version definitely has widescreen support, not sure about the other versions, but the PC version does NOT.

No, it doesn't. I am absolutely 100% certain of this.

Ancel developed it for the cube and then ported it to PS2 and Xbox, there is your answer.

Regardless, the XBOX version does look and run a bit better than the GC version (I've compared them directly). It was odd that the PS2 version was released a month or so before the XBOX and GC version, though.

 

[Great Rumbler]

If there is a bug in the game that prevents me from getting some items that I really could use, and the story as far as I got was as uninteresting as I've described many times, why should I finish it? Why should I expect anything to change when everything about the game (including reviews, I believe) says that it won't really? As I've said before, some late attempt to explain away some of the flaws just makes it more obvious how the game is split between trying to be fully cartoonish and trying to be a realistic game and doesn't get rid of the problem.

What you see as "flaws" in the story ARE NOT FLAWS. Not in the slighest are the majority of the things you've talked about before anywhere near being flaws. You don't know WHY they aren't flaws because you HAVEN'T FINISHED THE GAME. If you watch half of a movie and complain that the story doesn't make sense and has a lot of things that happen for bizarre reasons then I would tell you exactly the same thing.

 

[jetpacks was yes]

You can duplicate analog camera movement, but I can't recall analog motion. I'm not sure it was even required for the game (as sneaking used its own toggle button).

I see. The movement definitely used the analogue controls, if you're wondering about that. So that's not 100% accurate controls.

 

[dark10x]

Obviously; in nearly every case I can think of with multiplatform games the ps2 version is the last one you'd want to buy. But, there's no reason to call it trash, the game is still fine and holds up to other PS2 games fine.

That's not true. There were MANY situations last gen where the PS2 version WAS the version to buy. It's true that the XBOX version was typically your best bet, but this also applied for the PS2 in more situations than you'd think. The GC, however, was VERY RARELY home to "the superior version" of multiplatform games.

I see. The movement definitely used the analogue controls, if you're wondering about that. So that's not 100% accurate controls.

It seems to me that there wasn't a problem then. You COULD use Joy2Key to essentially full games into using analog provided those games offered a key based solution for those movement speeds. I went all out on testing the four versions back in the day and I KNOW very well that I had the PC version functioning beautifully on a pad. It just took a little work.

 

[Beer Monkey]

And for games released on PS2 and Xbox at the same time, I can think of very few examples where PS2 had the better version... um... wasn't Burnout better on PS2 cause it had better particle effects?

Burnout 3, but you had to give up (what many feel are) superior controllers and online service.

 

[plagiarize]

It's a shame, too, because the Gamecube was very capable of being home to great versions of multiplatform games; it seemed like in the case of Ubisoft especially (sans BG&E) for some strange reason the quality went from Xbox->PS2->GC.

And for games released on PS2 and Xbox at the same time, I can think of very few examples where PS2 had the better version... um... wasn't Burnout better on PS2 cause it had better particle effects? MGS2 was definitely better on the PS2, but I think that was a result of it being designed to take advantage of the PS2 or some such thing.

basically, what usually happened with multiplatform titles was, that the cube just got a port of the ps2 version as it wasn't deemed powerful enough to spend time making a specific cube version. the xbox version given it's greater power gap was generally given time for improvements.

then you factor in the lack of online on the cube and the smaller disc size leading to lower quality videos, sometimes textures and in early days less music in stuff like the tony hawk games.

occasionally the cube would get a down port of the xbox version and be superior to the ps2 version (forget the name of it, but that game with the clockword robot guy).