What’s arguably my favorite game of all time (challenged only by Rez) will be coming back shinier than ever for the current crop of consoles. How much do I love Beyond Good & Evil? I have the soundtrack on my iPod and it’s one of four or five games that I actually kept from the PS2 era. It’s actually the reason that I have hung onto my PS2 Slim.
If you’re not familiar with the game, the 2003 Ubisoft release had players controlling a photojournalist named Jade as she unraveled a conspiracy that proved the Alpha Sections–military protectors of planet Hyllis–were actually in league with the invading alien DomZ race. Along the way, Jade gave war orphans a safe refuge and snapped pics of the local flora and fauna to keep the bills paid, with combat, racing and some platforming elements for the gameplay.
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BG&E was created by Michel Ancel–who’s also responsible for the Rayman games–and often gets called a more mature version of The Legend of Zelda, since it’s got a dungeon-based structure and doles out new weapons over the course of the game. It’s become beloved since its initial release but it didn’t sell that well seven years ago. Since then, it’s been offered on download hubs like Steam, GameTap and GOG.com but it’s great news that it’ll be playable once again on consoles.
For the re-release, textures are reportedly being re-done so that the game will pop at 1080p resolution and the character models will be supposedly sharpened as well. BG&E ended with a killer cliffhanger and Ubi announced a sequel in 2008 but nothing else has been forthcoming in terms of news. Hopefully, the HD re-issue of the original game augurs well for BG&E2.
Beyond Good and Evil HD is coming to Xbox Live and Playstation Network in 2011. No firm release date or pricing have been given yet.