I remember playing and beating the HD version of this game over a decade ago, I remember enjoying it or at least enjoying certain parts of it but there were many areas of the game that are hazey for me. Playing the game again now, I find it easy to understand why that is. To put it simpily, BG&E is a collection of many different ideas and genres that is all hodgepodged into one game, some ideas land but many of them just feel they were an afterthought. Most if not all of the ideas the game presents felt like they weren't really fleshed out all that well. Many aspects feel half baked and some of the ideas that it does do well aren't fleshed out enough to leave a geniune impression.
Some good things are that visuals do look very nice even today, when looking at the game from a glance it has that same stylized 6th generation look that games like Jak and Daxter and the Ratchet and Clank have while also having unique elements of it's like having grosteque alien imagery and human characters. Characters move and react expressively even now and the art direction is solid too. Music has some pretty memorable tracks the race theme, the ship upgrade shop theme and the credits music are surprisingly catchy.The game is mostly on the easy side and say for maybe one difficulty spike in the Slaughterhouse in the North Wing where you fight a seemingly endless wave of small bug monsters, the game is pretty easy. However the only thing with BG&E that will be tested is your patience, more on that later.
BG&E's story while decently presented and acted is surprisingly pretty lacking. Jade is a decent character on paper but towards the middle half of the game from the Factory all the way to the mandatory fetch quest, not much really happens in the plot or any intrigue involving her character, when the kids she is looking after gets kidnapped towards the end of the game, I forgot they were even there since Jade never once is worried that they might be put in danger before the kidnapping happens. Pey'J is also decent character but he is gone for much of the game despite being in the game's marketing and on the front cover. The story kills him off and then his "death" was a fake out 10 seconds later.
The villains are also forgettable, General Kehck I didn't even know his name because he never did anything remarkable or noteworthy in the story and DomZ for the same reasons. They are honestly some of the most forgettable villains in a story driven game I have come across.
Gameplay is where things get hard to describe. BG&E has an open world but it's mostly optional until the end game fetch quest. It's like Zelda but there are only two official dungeons the whole game. It sort of like collectathon platformer but collecting only becomes neccescary towards the end of the game instead encouraging the player to look around, they just feel like out place progression roadblocks. There is taking pictures of aliens to get currency but it isn't really mandatory since you get lots of money anyway. Combat is there and with the exception of the before mentioned difficulty spike, it's mostly easy since you mash sqaure and maybe press dodge on occcasion, the main enemy you be fighting is the camera. Bosses don't put up much a fight since their attack telegraphs are easy to spot you get lots of healing items due to the money you get by just playing the game and the amount stations selling them. There's racing but the addition of that just felt like it was there because it's an open world game and there needed to be some mini game. There is vehicular and space shooting mini games but there's only a few and are just there just to have more gameplay styles since there is only less than 10 of them the whole game if even that.
The stealth is surprisingly decent stuff especially for a game that has insta fail stealth sections, this is an idea of BG&E that feels somewhat fleshed out. The AI has doesn't instantly spot you when in an enemy's line of sight and on top of that, the roll command while crouched is a decent way to move quickly and silently without feeling like you need to move at snail's pace to get anywhere. You can also generally get away from enemies go back to being stealthy except for when there is a flying gun turret. Killing enemies when kicking them from the back feels satisfying too.
The gyrodisc launcher has some use for killing enemies and for puzzles like moving certain objects too.
That's the thing with BG&E's gameplay as a whole, it does multiple things half decently rather than excelling at one thing. I never cared for this style of gameplay since by that point the game feels like a mini game collection. The stealth I praised, is only in the two dungeons and smaller interior levels so it's 25-30% of the game.
The section where you need to collect 55 pearls to reach the moon felt like padding when you could make one more dungeon instead.
Overall, okay game but I get why I didn't like the game as much as others did.
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