Last night at a CES Xbox House Party event, i got to lay eyes (and hands) on the upcoming XBLA release of Beyond Good and Evil HD. This is a port of the 2003 fan favorite, now with a lovely HD upgrade. I mean, the game was already lovely, and it would still hold up nicely today, but lots of work has been put into this upgrade, and it now looks real purdy.
All of the demo kiosks had a frames per second counter going in the lower right hand corner of the screen. BG&EHD sat at 60.09 most of the time, sometimes jumping up into the 61's. It looked so fluid and solid, and so...current gen. Ubisoft game producer Eric Damian-Varnet told us that the game was running at 720p in this session as it was limited by the televisions they had on hand, but that it fully suppports 1080p. We were playing on what looked to be 30-some inch sets and it already looked amazing. I'd really love to see this game in 1080p on a large set.
I got a full tour of the game's worlds, and they all looked fantastic. The underwater caves looked so lush and detailed that it was hard to believe that this was a game we last saw on the Gamecube. This wasn't just a quick port, though. Ubisoft told us that about 90 of the textures had to be redone for this HD version. The characters were also redone -- Jade looks better than ever. They credit the original for being ahead of its time in visuals, but it's easy to tell that they've done a lot of work to make this port shine.
Additional touchups are less apparent, but still appreciated. The Xbox 360's power let them eliminate some of the pop-in the old game suffered from. The original game's soundtrack was highly compressed, taking a bit too much away from the musical recordings. The music has been redone for this version, easing up on that compression.
Ubisoft said that they went into this thinking about both the dedicated fans of the game and the potential new players. It definitely shows. I think both will be very happy when Beyond Good and Evil HD is released some time in March as part of their House Party series for the Xbox 360.
Contest:
11:41 AM on 01.08.2011 | 
Same here, even though I already own the PS2 version
And to play this again with a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard... I'm so in.
The graphics and art style are good but I thought the story was pretty dull and cliche but made up for it with some memorable characters. From what I can remember, the gameplay was a mixed bag with its unimpressive and basic combat system and stealth sections. The platforming and puzzle-solving weren't anything special. TheMost fun part was riding on the water in the vehicle and listening some of the great music tracks. I still remember rolling my eyes at the scene where Jayde pulls a Matrix-style move later on in the game.
As far as I can tell from the released screenshots it does look almost identic.
I can't see the "revamped models" nor the "new textures".
Well, HD is just a resolution spec, it doesn't really mean anything other then 1280x720 and 1920x1080 pixel dimensions. Obviously with bigger pixel space you would want better res textures, better effects etc. That's all implied when we see the term HD now and just assume everything is better.
You could say the current PC version is already HD since you can play it in several resolutions equal or better then HD spec. To me, the screens I've seen look pretty much the same as what I played on the PC.
Playing the game at 640x480(of SD equivalent) then playing it at 1280x1024(or 720p or 1080p) does make a visual difference. Textures res would be dependent on the highest the PC version was made at. For last gen consoles, all of those would have been optimized for lowest common denominator resolutions which were around 640x480.
Because they still think it's impossible to pirate games on consoles.
I played it on the Gamecube, I loved it. Sure it's the same core game and hell I'm on an SDTV, but I want some kind of excuse to replay it :P
Relax. Dale says he got a look at the game at the CES Xbox House Party event – an event with 'Xbox' in the title is hardly going to have the PS3 version of the game on display.
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