Review by: Mitch Dyer

A flatulent pig owns an orphanage full of anthropomorphic goat children. Rastafarian rhinos run the most prominent repair shop on the planet. The heroine has an unhealthy obsession with the color green, and tacos are her go-to medicinal prescription. It’d be hard to take Beyond Good & Evil HD seriously were its politically charged story not sprinkled with torture, familial death, and oppressive martial law.

Beyond Good & Evil was an adventure game rich with great ideas and a deliberately simplified action approach – Batman: Arkham Asylum felt exactly like the natural, “next-gen” evolution of what BG&E set out to do. I’m loathe to admit the underappreciated original was anything less than perfect – it was a critical slam dunk, at the very least – but it’s a pillar of my present understanding of great gaming. Keep in mind I was 15 when it launched into a market that ignored it entirely, so I was more forgiving of its flaws than I am nearly eight years later. Yet even when I combine hindsight, growing up, and learning more about game design, BG&E stands the (very brief) test of time remarkably well.

This is a direct port with spiffier graphics, tuned-up audio, and improvements Ubisoft’s touting that I hardly noticed. The developer/publisher cites cleaned up glitches and technical performance, but I still found visual hiccups, particularly in areas with water. Weird instances where water animates oddly, or the lake you’re hovercrafting across looks like a TV showing a Creatures of the Deep documentary can really throw you off. Hey, at least the frame rate’s been cleaned up.