Beyond Good & Evil

[toblix]

Just finished this, or rather the HD version (but practically the same game), and noticed there was no thread for it. What a travesty! This game has held up incredibly well. It's fun, it's varied, it has some RPG elements, it has great collectibles (with map indicators!), it has humor and a strong design sense, it has a beautiful orchestral score and it has a nice difficulty curve. The combat is a bit simplistic by today's standards, but there's actually less combat than I thought I remembered, especially if you can handle the pretty simple stealth sections. It has a really strong sense of progress, and it's not long and drawn-out. I tend to group this game with the two Little Big Adventure games, since they, too, have this great and epic sense of exploration of weird colorful worlds that, despite consisting of toys and animals and silly enemies, manage to have a dark edge. Also, they balance exploration, puzzles and combat better than any other game I know of.

Oh, also the credits sequence of Beyond Good & Evil is just so god damn mother fucking long and drawn out. I still watched it, of course, just for the sequel-hint at the end that may or may not pan out.

[syntheticgerbil]

I think there's threads for it but they would be long closed. I loved the HD version, because besides giving me an excuse for playing it yet again, it looks much better now. Apparently the music got a higher quality overhaul as well.

Only thing really messed up and broken in the HD version is the Yo Pearl game. The second analog stick has controls reversed.

I should note about the credits in the HD version. They are ridiculously obnoxious because they now run at half speed. They were already longthe last time and now it's just downright painful. The reason is I guess they had to fit all the new Ubisoft administrative types collected since 2003 and then name everyone at Ubisoft Shanghai who remade the textures (Who of course should be credited, don't get me wrong). I'm actually kind of annoyed the original game credits don't go first, as the people who worked on the original game take forever to show up.

[Sno]

I've kind of been going back and forth on whether or not i should play the HD port.

I played the game when it originally came out, it was really great, but i wouldn't count it among my favorites.

I remember it being a really gorgeous game, wouldn't mind seeing it touched up.

I unno.

More thrilled that the sequel might actually finally happen, worried that it might not.

[twmac]

B&G remake is ace, there are few things that haven't aged well but overall it is awesome.

Don't want to plug the site I write on again this week... But Shaun wrote a pretty good review just this week on Arcadian Rhythms.

[thorn]

Is the HD version only available on PS3 and 360?

Oh, why am I even bothering asking? My computer ran the original PC port so badly that I gave up and bought the Xbox version.

[syntheticgerbil]

Unfortunately it looks like companies aren't in the practice of releasing the HD versions of games on PCs. It's probably partly because you could run the original game at an HD resolution even though they updated all of the texture.