Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows (Steam Deck: YMMV)
Buy it from: Ubisoft
Current goal: Just be. Goals are pressure.

Every time I replay Beyond Good & Evil, I forget how it starts. In my memory, it’s a game that begins with heroine Jade on her lovely, idyllic island, running around taking photographs of all the various beasties, and then, eventually, attacks rain from the skies. So I’m bemused, each time, when it’s the other way around.

I’m pretty disappointed by the state of the Steam release of the game. For no good reason you have to play it through an Ubisoft Connect account, and it lacks basic PC options like a way to play in a window on my ultra-widescreen monitor. (It even overrides Steam launch settings to force this!) Also, other people on Steam are so VERY mad that it doesn’t have the promised achievements. It’s not an auspicious launch. But it’s still BG&E, a game that I seem to replay every five or so years. So much so that honestly, I don’t want a sequel. I certainly don’t want a sequel that looks like anything in any of the bullshit trailers that have appeared over the years, pretending to be from a game that exists. The original is plenty. — John Walker