I vaguely remember playing Beyond Good & Evil on Xbox way back in college. I think it might have been my sophomore year. Distracted by studying and girls, I didn't get very far into the game--probably two or three hours at the most. I'm pretty sure I liked it, but aside from that my memory is pretty faint.

So, basically, I jumped at the opportunity to right past wrongs with the HD remake that just came out on Xbox Live. I finished the game last night--roughly 12 hours of play time--and really liked it. I didn't love it. But I did like it, and can certainly recognize why the game is so beloved by so many people. Since it's Friday and my mind is all scattered, I'll just cobble together some thoughts in bullet point format. Spoiler warning! I may or may not reference certain plot points. Here we go:

-- BG&E is a very sweet game. It's subtle with its story and characters, never really forcing the issue on who these people are and why they're doing what they do. You just kind of have to take the game's word on why the DomZ are so nasty and why we should trust Iris. But the sense of place and atmosphere are so delicately created that you don't really mind that. It's a pleasure simply to spend time in this world.

-- What an incredible soundtrack. There were times when I just cruised around aimlessly in the hovercraft listening to that piano, or loitered at Mammago to let that reggae song finish up. Just a standout collection of songs.

-- The camera is almost comically awful. No, it is comically awful. It's so bad that you have to laugh in order to keep playing the game, because otherwise you're going to break a controller. Was it more tolerable in 2003? My gut tells me no. A bad camera has always been a bad camera, right?

-- Certain parts of this game have aged really poorly, and I have to say that the stealth is one of them. Instant death when you've been spotted just doesn't cut it anymore.

-- Fortunately, the super-generous checkpoints alleviate that last issue. I don't care what people say, I love generous checkpoints.

-- I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun trying to explain what's happening in a game when my girlfriend walks by and asks what's going on. "See, I have to murder these flying scorpion things so that I can buy black market engine parts from Jamaican rhinoceroses and rescue my human-trafficked pig friend. On the moon. What, that's NOT obvious?"

-- Why is it that we haven't seen more games copy the spiral keyboard input? This has to be one of the most genius user interface elements of the past decade, and yet it hasn't caught on. The process of swiveling the analog stick to select a letter or number is miles above tap-tap-tapping on a virtual QWERTY keyboard.

-- Awesome ending. Does a great job of setting the stage for a sequel. Speaking of which, Ubisoft? Hmm? What exactly is going on here? I was pretty ambivalent when the sequel was announced in 2008, but now that I've actually completed the original game I'm suddenly much more eager. Then again, that might be the problem--too many people like me waited too long.