Beneath a Steel Sky

The Good
I was very fascinated by the game. It has a very dense atmosphere. The nicely drawn background graphics let you think you're really in this futuristic town, the animations of the characters are also very smooth. I also liked the speech (CD-ROM version only, of course), it fits excellent to the people's look and character I think. The game itself features very logic riddles to solve, if you're a bit experienced you should do it in no time.

The Bad
Hm ... I can't think of anything negative in this game.

The Bottom Line
Revolution Software didn't do many games - but each of the ones they released were great - Beneath a Steel Sky is one of them. Its quality is comparable to the classic LucasArts adventures, like Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island and Indiana Jones. But there's less humor in it, it even critizises this future society.

The Good
The best element of this game is the scenario...

This is definitely Sci-Fi at its best. The scenario is so good that some ideas from the game have been ruthlessly plagiarized in Hollywood movies.

Then there is the humour...we're talking about real entertainment bordering on the hilarious. From the cockney accent of some characters to the unbelievable attitude of Joey, this very strong aspect of the game also creates a balance because the hero sometimes finds himself in depressing and unfavourable situations.

I also liked the puzzles, which were very logical and of medium difficulty, with some of them being fairly easy...

The music and sound effects are good and the graphics should be probably considered as artwork back then in '94.

The next positive point for this game is that the developer company promoted it to freeware status! Revolution actually gave the source code to another team of developers who made it work even on WinXP!

The only thing you have to do is download the CD-talkie version of the game so that you don't miss out on the funniness of the dialogues, and then the ScummVM interpreter that makes the game run flawlessly without crushing. The copy-protection has been disabled. I also suggest that you grab the manual (the one compiled by the Underdogs!)

Oh...one more thing. About this mature content parental advisory...

The game contains some gory scenes, but any of the military-style execution FPS games would surpass this.

Then there are a couple of nude pictures which are definitely not provocative, but rather amusing, asking a cool chick out on a date, the probability of the sexual harassment of the hero by an old widow that actually never takes place...and donating your testicles to science at some time [after your death].

The language of the paranoid and anti-social inhabitants of the game is blunt and inevitably coarse at times but it’s definitely not swearing. For example...'How many times did I tell you not to disturb me LAME-BRAIN?'

This is about how offending this game can get. Actually I found it very funny...Nobody had ever called me a lame-brain before :))

The Bad
The only drawback is that the adventure is linear, which inevitably makes the game seem smaller than it really is and also affects the re-playability in a negative way.

The other thing that bothers me is why there has not been a sequel to this great game...

The Bottom Line
Well, how do YOU feel when your day really sucks right from the start?

First, there were these Gestapo-like goons that abducted me and then murdered my foster father and the rest of the townsfolk. And then our transport crushed inside the city!

Probably you won't believe me but this was my second helicopter crash in one lifetime! Even if I joined the air force I'd be safer than that...

...and now I'm a fugitive in this nightmare city. The architect was probably depressed when he designed this dump...and he didn’t have any idea about sustainable development either!

At least I have my friend Joey with me, but he's not much help. All that's left of him is a piece of motherboard with some chips on it. Hang on in there robot pal...I’ll find a way to fix you alright.

Then I'll be ready to dispense some justice on whoever is responsible for this madness!

The Good
A not-so-well-known adventure classic by most accounts. BASS combines a gritty Blade-Runerish ambience, with a setting ripped right out of Metropolis with a lot of black humor to deliver an adventure game that gives us great ol' fashioned point-and-clicking goodness.

The storyline is pretty much a ripoff, but still it is made fresh by the use of a lot of sarcasm and black humor. Really, the comedy writing is very good in this one, tough a little dry at times (as most British comedy). The puzzles are rather average but regardless of their difficulty, they are very well laid out and follow logical paths, (even the ones that require specific timing) so they never become frustrating. In fact, most will be solved quite easily, tough not in the "use-hammer-with-nails" fashion, but in ways that require moderate neuronal use.

Graphically speaking the game is pretty good, not groundbreaking but still nice to look at, and the sound fx are accurately cyberpunkish and moody.

The Bad
Not much to write here. The only thing I noted a little of key in this game was the subject matter. More specifically, it's treatment. You see, for as much comedy as it has, the story is pretty dark at heart and has lots of serious moments. Now, I don't have anything against games that switch gears like this, in fact I love them and respect them as very ballsy products, but it seems to me that BASS switches gears a tad too fast. For instance: one second you are goofing around with a character, like you were Larry or Guybrush, the next you find her dead body courtesy of a conspiracy murder, the next your buddy Joey provides some comical relief, the other you are supposed to dethrone a cybernetic entity that has some pretty bad plans for your brain and civilization... but before you had to go through a puzzle that involved having fun with a little cutesy dog!... etc. etc.

The Gabriel Knight games managed to combine everything evenly, spacing out every "serious" element from the comedic ones, yet BASS seems to mix them all together and just throw them your way... It's not really a game-crippling mistake, but it's enough to start making things fall apart as you get further in the game.

The Bottom Line
Real funny game based on a Blade Runner/Metropolis setting. Not the best adventure game ever, and the humor is not always easy to get, but it still has plenty of puzzling goodness, and some excellent writting. Very playable, very indeed.