Beneath a Steel Sky

The Good
Beneath a Steel Sky is Revolution's second adventure game, and an excellent one, I must admit. Robert Foster stumbles across a barren wasteland known as The Gap. During his stay, he is raised by a peaceful tribe, and learns how to hunt and survive in the wasteland. Suddenly, outsiders destroy the wasteland and kidnap Foster, and take him to a city where everything is controlled by a super computer, known as LINC. As he explores the city, he tries to find out who or what LINC is and the person called Overmann that he is accused being of.

As Foster, you are also accompanied by his robot friend Joey, and you'll need to activate him at the start of the game. He can perform tasks that you can't – tasks such as hacking into security systems, jimmy door locks, and do other things without your presence. Once you get him up and running, he gets rude and arrogant, greeting Foster with “Is this the best shell you could find?” and answering one of his questions with “It's not worth explaining, you're too thick.” One interesting thing that you can do, however, without the help of Joey, is log into various LINC terminals around the city, to change the functioning of machinery.

BASS introduces Version 2.0 of Revolution's Virtual Theatre system. Characters are free to walk around, speak to people, and do their own shit – like what we do in everyday life. Speaking of characters, most of who you meet in the game can give you information that may or may not answer Foster's questions, and some are funny. One of the funniest characters that I met is Mrs. Piermont. I found it amusing to listen to her speak especially if you buzz her apartment. She becomes so stress if you do something with her dog.

There are a few comedic situations in the game, such as the courtroom appearance, presided by a judge who doesn't know what he is talking about. And later on in the game, you will meet a talking jukebox that attempts to seduce you while trying to select a song. If you select a particular song, the jukebox will get stuck.

BASS's interface is easy to use, and like Revolution's last game, it is intelligent. You see, click on an object with the left mouse button and the game assumes that you want to examine it, and if you click the right mouse button on that object, or other ones, it assumes that you want to manipulate it. And whatever button you click on a character, the game will always assume that you want to speak to him or her.

BASS is a lot better than Lure of the Temptress in terms of two things – graphics and sound. The graphics are a lot detailed, and they make you feel that you are walking into workshops, security rooms, or out on walkways or investigating something. What I like about the game is that it gives you the ability to enter LINC-space. The backgrounds, as well as individual objects, look well drawn, and even there are dangers that you must overcome, such as the eyeball that watches you wherever you go in the room. I love the graphics when you reach the end of the game. You enter room after room containing advanced technology, and veins sticking out from everywhere. Unlike Lure of the Temptress, there is background music in the game. One of the better pieces of music lies within LINC-space. The sound effects are suburb, especially when played through the Sound Blaster.

Anyone who doesn't like solving puzzles in an adventure game will be pleased to know that there is very little of that here. You just basically find places where you need to be and do whatever you need to do. As you progress through the game, the story goes much further and it eventually leads to one involving androids taking over the city.

Users with CD-ROM drives will get full speech throughout the game, and it is the speech that enhances the pleasure of the game, with talent from both the US and Britain. As well as this, though, users are treated to a comic book introduction that gives them a good background on how Foster came to be. I enjoyed listening to the old man rambling on about The Evil. Users of the disk version would already have a comic book in their box.

The Bad
Whenever you use text in the game, you notice that certain words are in uppercase (eg: How come your FIRE exit leads NOWHERE?) I suppose that it serves as emphasis on certain objects, but if I wrote like that in high school, I would have gotten bad marks. In fact, a review that I saw in a games magazine made fun of this nonsense.

The Bottom Line
Beneath a Steel Sky is an excellent game that has a story which becomes more and more interesting as progress is made. The game has very good graphics and sound, and you will enjoy reading the comic book that gives some info on Foster's background. I was glad that Revolution released the game (both floppy and CD versions) three years ago, giving you all the more reason to try it out.

The Good
I liked pretty much everything, and the voice acting was superb for its time. BASS was made by Revolution Software, and that was not a very well known company back then, and to say that BASS could be compared to Lucasarts adventures is to say that they are pretty damn good at what they do!!!

The Bad
My copy of the game had a bug in it (which was probably why I bought it for $10), every 5 mins or so the game would come up with a blue screen of death and quit, so I had to save every 2 mins or so. Other than that it was fine.

The Bottom Line
If you like Lucasarts, then get this!!! This is very much like Lucasarts games.

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.