Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)

DISCLAIMER: This is a first impressions review, and NOT a full review, if you want a full review, then please read better reviews then mine A classic Revolution Software game and an impressive point and click adventure game! RECOMMENDED :)

This game was very good. Great narrative design.

Hey Brandon, this is a great game. You should play it... Now!

Hmmmm, a bit of cyperpunk that doesn't feel like generic cyperpunk. An old-school adventure games of point and clicking. And it's free as well, so thanks devs. But while I had high hopes and even enjoyed the beggining, despite absolutely lacking audio side of a game, such as weird voices and a lack of a lot of sounds or missing speech, it kind went downhill. I am a grown man by now, I can't handle flaws of these old adventure games anymore. Mostly because I read books now so I don't have to tolerate all the BS in order to get simplistic plots of them. Or bleh, I am still in disbelief over Monkeys Islands, Sierra Quests and so on, my soul is still in pain. This game has quick deaths, which are fun. No dead ends unless you forget to take an id card off a corpse. But it still has stuff such as being able to get 'key' before finding of 'door' existance. Good old pixelhunting, because who knew that doors suddenly have a separate 'lock' area. Getting stuck and then doing anti-social stuff because you are a bastard in a limbo. Such as cutting off an anchor off a statue without knowing what you want with it yet because the owner isn't in a room. This game even added such amazing thing as "you have to do this stupid thing in this area in order for unrelated event to pop up in some another room". That got old fast. Plot isn't hot either, all over a place. Too much forced comedy. Just feels like separate pieces. Music also got old. So while I thought that it's going to be an interesting 90s adventure game that might be better than others due to not being a comedy-focused primarly, well, eh... it's not different. Help!

Despite it's age, Beneath A Steel Sky is still one of the better point and clicks out there, even compared to modern offerings. There's nothing particularly amazing about it these days, but it's still a well designed, enjoyable game. I didn't find the story super appealing, but it's well enough written and that's mostly a matter of taste. The characters are, at the very worst, still quite memorable, and some of the interactions (such as with your robot companion) were pretty novel back when the game was new. The writing is good, the voices are decent (great by the standards of 20 years ago), the puzzles are *generally* pretty logical ( and I'm not sure why some people think "contemporary" audiences would have any particular problem with them, to be sure), but there is a bit of pixel hunting and walking-related time filler, something pretty standard back in the day and not particularly unusual now. As the game runs off the ScummVM interpreter, it works quite well, and should in theory run on literally just about anything with an input device and display screen. Think that sums up the pros pretty well. Some cons: Like pretty much every adventure game ever, you'll often do things because you know you're playing a game. Someone used the example of cutting an anchor of a statue, not because anything indicates you should, but just because you can, so you probably should. The music was good for the 90s, and is good at first. At first. Some of the accents are frankly goofy (why does Reich sound like a 1930s mobster when the game is set in Australia and everyone else sounds... not like that, anyway), and the spoken dialog doesn't match the written dialog exactly (it's much more "American" in terminology). You can die, though it's mostly kinda hard to do accidentally. Some people hate this in these games. All that said, it's free, so it's sort of hard to really have much complaint. Give it a go if you like point and clicks.