Impressions: Beyond Good and Evil HD (Xbox Live Arcade)

Beyond Good and Evil was one of my favorite games to ever come out for the Playstation 2, all the way back in 2003 (both the game and the system remain in my possession and working to this day). The game revolves around Jade, a girl in her twenties who works as a photographer with a small rebellion to expose a conspiracy within the government regarding the invasion of the DomZ, an alien force that is abducting people. Here in 2011, while still waiting for the long-gestating follow-up to the original, I downloaded the high-definition remastered version of the original game for a large helping of good ol' nostalgia. As I'm currently playing through the game, I'll offer my impressions thus far, seeing as I, along with everyone who played the game when it originally came out, knows how the game ends.

The Good:
-This is the game I fell in love with eight years ago. The characters are there, the charm, the score, the story, everything. This is a pure blast from the past, residing in my system's hard drive.
-The sound is crisper than it used to be and sounds great on a surround sound system.
-The framerate is very solid and smooth; I've been playing for several hours with next to no slowdown at all
-Jeez, it's Beyond Good and Evil! It's like a conspiracy and stealth version of The Legend of Zelda, with aliens. What's not to like?

The Bad:
-The graphics, while "updated", are still sub-par by today's standards. This is to be expected, as it is an HD remake of a Playstation 2 game, and often when companies say "remake", they mean "updated textures and improved sound quality"
-The bugs from the original game are still here; Pey'j sitting in a corner and being unresponsive is to be expected.
-Some of the controls are a little wonky and don't make much sense. I feel like developers are past the times where you can't use both the directional pad and the joy stick to navigate the in-game menus, and it took me a little bit to figure out how to access Jade's rucksack

The "Why?"
-The Leaderboards: I admit, I've never been a big user of leaderboards, but this is a single-player only game, so they do not seem to serve much of a purpose, but I see the inclusion of leaderboards with a lot of games released over Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network