Beyond: Light Advent – Review

Carl and Diana are out investigating a UFO crash in the town of Arrowhead. At the site, she discovered Nix, who she once thought was the product of her childish imagination. Nix is no ordinary human, he is a friend from space and he came to Earth to warn Diana about an upcoming global-scale attack from the World-Eaters! Can Diana prevent the attack and save the world?

Mad Head Games is no doubt the king of creativity in the casual games world. With each and every new series, the developer introduced us to a new theme – and Beyond, the recent release from Mad Head, is a fantastic take on the rarely-touched Sci-Fi theme.

First off, Beyond: Light Advent has one of the most intriguing, exciting and heartwarming storylines we have seen in HOPA games in quite a while. In fact, it kind of reminds us of the all-time classic film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. As you make your way through Beyond: Light Advent, you will meet with several interesting, well-voiced characters. Although there are not many characters in Beyond, each of them has such rich personality that makes us want to revisit the game just for a chance to hang out with them again.

Not only does Beyond deliver in terms of the story, its presentation is also stellar. The graphics are extremely authentic, perhaps because a Sci-Fi themed HOPA is quite hard to find so we were not spoiled with Sci-Fi landscapes yet. Regardless, the artwork in Beyond is amazingly drawn and painted – each game looks terrific and could make a perfect desktop wallpaper. In addition, the soundtracks also deserve some applause. They certainly sound very futuristic, apart from the title track which is wonderfully retro.

Beyond: Light Advent is a story-focused adventure game. Thus, the adventure part of the game might feel a little too linear for some players, with a little too much hand-holding. Still, those minor setbacks are overshadowed by the top-notch hidden object scenes and puzzles. The hidden object scenes are some of the best in the industry; many of them come with sub-scenes inside themselves, as well as some fun mini-games. The puzzles are no less entertaining; they are all smartly designed to integrate well into the storyline, definitely with the fun-factor in mind.

Since Beyond: Light Advent is so refreshingly awesome, we blasted through the 5-hour gameplay in just one sitting. As for the Collector’s Edition, it features a ton of extras – including an hour of excellent bonus gameplay.