Beyond Good & Evil HD is coming – look busy

In the grand scale of ‘games that make me feel a bit funny’, Beyond Good & Evil is right up there with the best of them. Which is why the news that Ubisoft’s warm-hearted and clever adventure is coming to PSN – in Glorious HD, no less – is a very good thing indeed.

I first played the game back on the GameCube (sorry), and while I’m generally not a fan of Zelda or Zelda-like games (sorry again) there was something about BG&E that just enthralled me. It could have been the music, which is being remastered to make it even more spiffy and nice. It could be the beautiful looks, with a wonderful art style and eerie green hue to everything about it – and is another thing being remastered in the aforementioned Glorious HD.

But maybe it was because it was a game lacking in pretension, not attempting to blow you away with its bombastic nature or demanding your attention with “LOOK! PHYSICS!” BG&E just got on with things. It had annoying parts (hello stealth), the hovercraft could be a bugger to control at times and it’s not like the storyline was anything other than Obvious From The Start.

But none of that mattered to me at the time, and Beyond Good & Evil’s good points have always outweighed the few irritating aspects a great deal. To claim it as innovative is pushing it a bit, and to say it changed gaming forever is clearly the lies of a rose-tinted madman. But it was – and still is – a wonderful game; woefully under-appreciated in its time and fully deserving of a re-release so we can badger you once more to actually buy the thing.

Plus it makes me more hopeful we’ll hear something new about Beyond Good & Evil 2 in the near future.