Released back in 2003 in the middle of the PS2/Xbox era, Beyond Good and Evil was a third person actionadventure that was criminally left to fly under the radar of many gamers attentions. Its underwhelming response was a contrast to the reviews the original received, most commenting on the design of the game as well as the aesthetics the development team managed to incorporate seamlessly into their impressive designs. I guess the best way to describe the original Beyond Good & Evil is it was the jack of all trades but master of none. The game was solid in every department but nothing really stood out, with this potentially being the reason it didnt quite achieve the success it deserved on release. Despite this, it does contain an inherent charm with its art deco aesthetic, fleshed-out characters and overall expansiveness, while maintaining good core mechanics with which to build a sequel from. The sequel, officially announced back in 2008, has like others on this list gone through many iterations with its current state being specifically designed for next-gen consoles. Stop-start development with the game being put on hold is the reason that the sequel has been shifted from previous-gen to the next-gen and one hopes these delays will be the last to plague the game. With developers commenting that they wish to avoid the commercial failings of its predecessor, one hopes the things that made the original so good are not lost when translating to a more contemporary-minded mechanic. In the meantime the original game has since found a broader audience by being placed within the XBL/PSN stores as well as ported to Steam, which can only serve to benefit the much-deserved sequel by whipping up much greater levels of anticipation.
