Created by Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman, Beyond Good and Evil is a game that not many people have heard of, even less have played, but the majority that have will agree on one thing: It’s certainly ‘Beyond Good’. To celebrate the HD remake being one of the Xbox’s free Games with Gold for the month of August, it’s time to revisit one of the most under-appreciated titles of all time.

BG&E is set in the year 2435 on a small mining planet called Hillys. Despite the futuristic year, the game hasn’t gone completely futuristic with chrome skyscrapers everywhere. Grass still remains and most buildings still have the stone exterior reminiscent of a more Mediterranean style resort. What has taken on leaps on bounds is the biology. Your ‘uncle’ is a boar, the local garage mechanics appear to be a family of rhino’s and the pet dog has grown to the size of a Nissan Juke, but still as playful and clumsy as ever.

You play as Jade, a headstrong and powerful character, and not your typical female protagonist. She was never created for sex appeal in order to shift more copies of the game unlike female protagonists before her. Jade was created as an equal and in a game with as rich a biodiversity as this, it really is a refreshing change to see all living creatures as equals. Apart from the dog, which is still a domesticated pet. There are still plenty of creatures that have evolved to be less than friendly however.

Jade and her ‘uncle’, Pey’j (pronounced ‘page’) own a lighthouse where they care for the children of Hillys who have been orphaned by an alien race known as the DomZ. They are struggling to keep up payments on the lighthouse however, so Jade takes a job as a photographer, tasked with documenting each and every living creature on Hillys. This now becomes a game-long minigame, and while it has been done before and continues to be done in most exploration games, it still feels fresh seeing more evolved forms or animals you are more than familiar with. This leads them to their first mission where they must photograph a specific creature hidden in the old mines.

As the story progresses, you uncover conspiracies, lies, corruption and more. It is a surprisingly mature story that you would not necessarily expect from a game with quite cartoony graphics at first glance. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as you have plenty of opportunity to relax between missions, and there is plenty to do. Various other minigames in the local bar, hovercraft races, further exploration in the caves dotted around the harbour, even a trip off planet. All are designed extremely well. The rewards for completing these come in the form of pearls, which act as a special currency to purchase more unique items for your hovercraft, which in turn unlock more areas.

When you are on a mission, the gameplay changes again and becomes much more stealth based, with plenty of environmental puzzles. The stealth gameplay isn’t as robust as other games purely associated with stealth, but it works well enough and simple enough that it isn’t an issue. And with lenient checkpoints any error you make isn’t really punished. For those where stealth isn’t an exciting prospect, these areas are few, and interspersed with more action based sections.

The version currently available free on Xbox is the HD version, and it’s fair to say this is a bit more than a simple HD gloss-over. Not only were the overall graphics tidied up, but the soundtrack was totally re-mastered. Bear in mind though that the HD version is itself now over 5 years old so it may not live up to more recent ‘HD remakes’ but it is still more than passable.

In terms of the soundtrack, it is made up of a majority of atmospheric tracks. There are a few tracks that will get stuck in your head though, one in particular being the Mammago Garage. Here is where you will visit to upgrade your hovercraft and it doesn’t help that upon your first visit there the (what can only be described as) Rasta Rhinos even sing along to the tune. Yes this song will get in your head too and by the end of the game you will be singing along also.

For a completion time, you are looking at about 10 – 15 hours. For a single-player action-adventure game, it sits right in the middle of average. Not too short, not too long. It’s the Baby Bear bowl of porridge equivalent, just right. The game isn’t the most difficult but it is more about the story itself, and bumping up the difficulty would detract from the pace of the game so this should not be seen as an issue.

When Beyond Good and Evil came out originally back in 2003 it flew under the radar. And 13 years later I am still fighting in its’ corner because it still doesn’t have the accolades it deserves. The HD remake did bring along a flurry of new fans with it, who are all now sat patiently waiting for the long-time teased sequel. It was always planned as a trilogy, the first has a post-credits scene that leaves the door wide open for one and Ubisoft have frequently said they are working on one, as early as 2008. Hopefully, with this being part of the Games with Gold programme for Xbox this month, as well as being playable on the Xbox One, more people will have a chance to play this now. Simply put, this game is special.