Beneath a Steel Sky

The Good
Beneath a Steel Sky is, in a nutshell, both an excellent point-and-click adventure, and a work of art. The background graphics are all hand-drawn and look excellent, with lots of attention to detail. The game itself is very detailed and well made. Good plot, memorable characters, lots of objects to interact with, multiple scenes/events that take place during the game and extend the plot, and the puzzles bring a good challenge from start to finish. The game length is reasonable as well; not too long or too short. Dialogue is extensive, and often witty and humorous, while also crucial to solving some of the puzzles.

The Bad
The voice acting from the CD version could be described as somewhat cheap and boring, creating more of a budget feel. I personally thought that some of it was just flat out horrendous. Although the music isn't bad, it can get stale and repetitive if you're in a certain area for a long period of time. Some parts of the game may require a walkthrough, and/or a dozen saves.

The Bottom Line
Like I said in the review title, Beneath a Steel Sky is a point-and-click adventure you shouldn't miss if you're in to the genre, especially since it's freeware now. It has its flaws, but whatever, I'm willing to forgive and forget. Go and download it now, either from Classic DOS Games or GOG.com, or if you're a Linux user, look for it in the package repository for your distribution. You won't be disappointed. One word of advice, though: you might want to look for the walkthrough on the Internet, if you find yourself stuck on a ridiculously hard puzzle. Also, don't forget to save often.

That said, you're in for a uniquely good experience if you're playing this for the first time. Highly recommended.

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.

The Good
This is one of my favourite adventure games, hands down. I enjoyed it immensely. The graphics were rather dated, even at the time I first played it, but they transmit the dark and, yes, steely ambience of this world. An innocent man crashes a helicopter into a hospital to save his own life. A sinister employer forbids the workers in a power plant to wear protective clothing, from nothing but pure malice. For all the technology in the city, either victimising or pampering its population, its deepest root is a nest of living veins and nerves. How could I not love it? There seems to be an underlying motif of chairs... throne-like VR chairs, used for medical treatment, or transmission of information, or torture.

And the plot, gods, the plot! It is so twisty and loopy, I will not even start on it. Suffice it to say, it would do justice to a good SF novel.

And I liked Joey. In my right mind, I would hate a cute robotic sidekick, but the many witticisms and body changes of Joey proved one of the joys of the game. Plus, of course, he turned out vital to the ending.

The Bad
Cyberpunk doesn't age prettily, but that was not a problem with this game. It felt real. My problem, rather, was that it seemed to be two distinct games. The first sector (about up until Foster entered the church) is rather LucasArts in style, though with a darker background, more violence and a more acrid sense of wit. (Backtalking robot sidekicks, a Mr Burns-style madman in charge, and so on.) Howsoever, from the moment Foster finds the dead bodies, it turns into a deadly serious cyberpunk thriller. (See the death of Anita, the torture chair etc.) Now, I like both genres, but it seems like there is no way to bridge the gap.

There could have been more of it. More of the cold war against Hobart, more hints about Obermann, more city to explore. But that's not really a bad thing.

Also, this is a personal thing, but I would have liked it even more if Reich had stuck around a bit longer. Continually trying to trick a sadistic personal nemesis as well as a faceless corporation and a sinister electronic deus ex machina would have made the story even more interesting. Oh well.

The Bottom Line
An involving, baroque, dark futuristic city trip of wit and drama. A must play for all adventure gamers.