Beyond Good and Evil HD Re-View
Alot has been said about Beyond Good and Evil over the years and for the most part its all been good. It along with Psychonauts, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath Beyond Good and Evil is a highly regarded title from the last generation of consoles that never really found its footing at retail. Since its release in 2003, fans have clamoring for a sequel, but since their obviously aren’t too many fans of the game Ubisoft is in no hurry to accommodate them. In 2008 at their own press event Ubi debuted a teaser of Beyond Good and Evil 2. Since then news stories have both confirmed and denied the existence of the title with the current status of its development is in the dark.
Then, in steps Beyond Good and Evil HD. Kicking off Microsoft’s House Party lineup of XBLA titles, Beyond Good and Evil is a direct port of the original game to Xbox 360. The title will hit PSN, presumably when Microsoft’s exclusivity window ends. A new generation of gamers can now experience Beyond Good and Evil in a shiny new budget release form for 800 Microsoft points ($10). If one can look past the business decision for this release, and take it for what it is, they just may find a game that was a gem for its time. However, if a new gamer is just now picking up Beyond Good and Evil for the very first time, this release will not sit well with them I promise.
Obviously before going whole hog (pun intended) into development of a sequel, Ubisoft wants to test the waters with this rerelease to see if anyone still cares. You know, with game development being expensive and all, they don’t want to loose money…again. To think that this is being released as a tribute to the fans is a pretty naive way to look at it. The only problem with “test the waters” idea is that had this release been given more attention, it could have really been used to rope in new fans and grow the customer base significantly.
The good news is that its definitely Beyond Good and Evil, not much has changed in the game. You still play as Jade a photographer, who with her adopted pig-uncle (Pey’j) joins, an underground movement to overthrow the militant dictatorship that is posing as their protectors. The story is still compelling and the charaters are still fantastic. In fact those aspects of the game have aged really well. Other than the “M-Discs” that you use to move the story forward, the sci-fi elements of the game are as sharp as they were when the game originally launched in 2003. The game-play in the original was not terrible, but it had a few hiccups. Any problems with the mechanics and/or controls could easily be overlooked because of the strength of the puzzles, characters and settings…8 years ago. Today, they can’t be as easily forgiven.
Let’s face it, gaming has changed alot since the PS2, Gamecube and XBOX days. Processing power has obviously made games look better but, more importantly it’s made them play better. Where loading screens used to be a significant hurtle in every game, now-a-days gamers typically have to put up with one load screen upfront while most subsequent loading is hidden behind cut scenes. The original Beyond Good and Evil had load screens everywhere…no, I mean EVERYwhere.
Everydoor you walked through and every path you took had a load screen before the new section was available. Sure, they weren’t very long but it doesn’t take much these days to cause a gamer to get detached from the experience and mindless cutscenes will do it. This is something that could have been addressed with the HD release. String 2-4 times the areas together in the original load and allow you to free roam amongst them. I know the power of the 360 can handle it, hell look at how many open world games do it well. Asking a 15 year old kid to wait for every room to load will turn him off immediately.
Additionally, something as simple as adjusting the camera axis should have been addressed. Nearly every game released these days has the ability to invert X and Y camera controls independently of one another. Personally, I like my Y axis inverted and my X axis normal. Beyond Good and Evil in 2003 only allowed you to either keep them both normal or both invert, no mix and match. This camera option did not change with the the HD update, so I had to choose whether I wanted to always be running in circles or always staring at the sky.
No matter what decision I made, the first several hours of adjustment were going to be miserable. Also unlike newer titles, this game doesn’t hold your hand very often. Now-a-days hints are constantly being thrown at you leading you in the direction you need to go. Beyond Good and Evil has some hints but for the most part it wants you to figure it out on your own. Small things like this are sprinkled throughout the entire experience, and had they been addressed and updated, the game would fit better into the context of the re-release’s generation.
The polygon counts haven’t changed much so you can expect it to look alot like an XBOX game, but that’s understandable. The textures have been very lightly enhanced, but the vividness of the setting helps distract the player from the obvious age the game carries around with it. Had a full re-rendering of the environments and models been done, the game would have benefited greatly. This is a case where upping the resolution of the graphics almost makes the game uglier, kinda like watching Conan O’Brien in 108op makes you notice that he kinda looks like an alien.
In alot of aspects this release a huge misstep by Ubisoft. They stand to gain very few fans from the release and fans that haven’t played the game in a long time may have forgotten what things were like 7 years ago. If they are trying to gain attention for the franchise, then I guess it works, but it would have probably been a smarter move to release it as an XBOX original on XBLA. In that scenario, less work would’ve had to have been done porting it (making it cost less green to produce) and it would be available as an archived game for people to play…almost like its in a museum. As it stands, its a tent pole of the XBLA release schedule and is being billed as a new game, when it is very not one. Where does this version of this game even belong?
Verdict: Be patient I promise it will get good.
