Although I'm not a big fan of mystery or horror, the first Gabriel Knight tells a satisfyingly complex story and develops a richly detailed world of voodoo, shadow hunters, mystics, and beignets. The graphics are clean and on par with other Sierra titles of the time. The varied soundtrack creates an appropriate sense of peacefulness, tension, mystery, or danger on every screen. The game takes place over a series of days, and you spend most of the game revisiting the same dozen places each day. There are mandatory tasks to accomplish before each day will end (so, no unwinnable scenarios), but it's often unclear what needs to be solved today when you won't see the significance until tomorrow. Feedback on specific actions is good; general guidance is poor. Constant backtracking is bad enough without being unsure what you're looking for, but a couple puzzles (eg, the clock) require MAJOR leaps of logic that can hold up the game. There are also too many interaction icons (pick up, move, operate, AND open?) that are inconsistently interchangeable, making some obvious solutions confusingly precise. The voice acting adds to the experience (though I did turn off the voiced narration immediately—good voice, but not for a narrator), but some of the characterizations are questionable. Gabriel continually sexually harasses Grace, but we're meant to excuse it as funny banter. Her deep concern for him later on seemingly comes out of nowhere, as does the romance between Gabriel and another character. Of all the corpses Gabriel encounters and reacts to, the person he knew best affects him the least. As good as the rest of the writing is, these are serious turn-offs. If you're looking for a more forgiving Police Quest with Cajun flavor and a supernatural twist, give Gabriel Knight a try. Just take the critical acclaim with a grain of salt. NOTE: GOG download doesn't offer the graphic novel that came with the game. The game contains adult language, some nudity, and graphic gore.
The trouble with Beneath a Steel Sky is that it feels like a patchwork of fragments from different good adventure games, which fit together poorly to make a playable but inconsistently enjoyable game. You've got death sequences...but not enough of them for there to be any reliable sense of consequence to your actions. The overall feel of the game is generally fairly serious, with some especially dark moments, yet there are out-of-the-blue moments of goofball comedy that are completely incongruous with the rest of the game. The challenge factor of the puzzles fluctuates wildly; sometimes the puzzles are intuitive and downright easy, while other times it won't even be apparent that there's a puzzle at all. If you're up for an adventure game featuring a dystopian cyberpunk society with a complex storyline, BASS is at least worth a look. It's just difficult to recommend the game with any real enthusiasm because of how disruptive the inconsistencies are.
