Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All it's cracked up to be"

Back in 2003, I was a Playstation 2 owner with alot on my mind. Do I get Need for Speed or Final Fantasy X-2, or Do I get SSX 3 or Jak II Renegade? For the Playstation 2, it was a good year for games. So much so that when Beyond Good and Evil came out it completely passed me by. I knew it existed, but I didn't much beyond the fact it had a chick dressed in Green and was something reviewers were raving about. So when I found out it was being remastered and released on XBOX Live Arcade, I knew had to give it a go.

This first thing that hits you about Beyond Good and Evil is how even nearly 8 years on, is how fresh it feels in terms of gaming. When I began playing I was expecting something that would take me back to the old days of my gaming youth. But exactly the opposite happened, I felt engaged in the game and not like I was playing an old remake of a classic, but something new and exciting. The story is basically centred around a female photographer called Jade (the chick dressed in green), and her home planet of Hillys which is currently at under siege by a race called the Domz, and the planet is being protected by a group called the Alpha Section. However is not as it appears and there are some who believe the Alpha Section to be in league with the Domz. And its up to Jade to find out the truth.

Now I know what your thinking, "Oh boy, here we go again! Another Game where you have to save you Planet by Blowing the Other Guy Up! With Bigger and Badder Guns!". If your thinking that, STOP IT! Beyond Good and Evil is not about that at all. Come to think of it, almost none of the characters in the Game have guns (except the bad guys). Jade herself has what is essentially a stick to fight with through the whole game. The way you bring about saving your planet is not by blowing stuff up (though that does happen as a biproduct), no using photographing to catch the enemy and their secrets, and showing the public so they will rise up against them. Essential your Lois Lane but without some moron in tights to save your ass all the time.

As much as this sounds like a dull concept it plays out really well, you never really feel the need to just say to hell with it and start beating up the enemy (mainly because they are much bigger and tougher than you). In fact the mission are so well organised that you rarely have time to think about that guy who you could have beaten up but didn't. This is where Beyond Good and Evil has real strenght, it doesn't bog down in the same old go here and blow up stuff and then kill lots of guys. There are boss battles which are alot of fun, but the main missions are always more about figuring how to get from one place to another and how to get the one shot that could help the people see what really going on.

The main missions are what you will focus on mostly, but that shouldn't take anything away from the side missions. Unlike some games where side missions just feel stuck on (Assassin's Creed One being the most obvious that comes to mind), this games extra missions dont feel like extra missions, they just feel like another part of a rounded game. The most obvious extra missions being your nature photography mission which is take a photo of every animal in the gaming world. This is both fun and adds depth as it makes you far more concious of the creatures living in the game world, and not just always out to destroy them.

There is so much good stuff I can say about Beyond Good and Evil HD, it is really a mastercrafted game, even the NPCs feel like they are not just generic characters, but people (or not as the case is more often that not) who each have there own drives and chracteristics. That side we are talking about a game that is 8 Years old, and there are signs of that, such as in the Graphics, which although sharpened up are still a little blocky in places. I know lots of critics will go on about the gaming camera being annoying, but seriously most 3rd Person games get the camera wrong even now!

To wrap this up, because I can see I have been going on for long enough now, this game is epic. For the mere price of 800 MSpoints you can get a second chance to play a game that was so missed by the public at large. It is a totally worth while purchase and you will have lots of fun with this game. Even now this game still feels original and a lot of the ideas you see in this game wont have been done elsewhere, which is a shame really. If I could talk to myself 8 years ago, I would have told them to ignore all those bigger titles and go for this little gem, because its still even now really different to everything else out there. I have heard rumour that Ubisoft is currently working on Beyond Good and Evil 2. In which case I will await that game with baited breath, because if its even half as original as this game still is, then it will be worth the wait.