"Beneath a Steel Sky" is a very old game dating back to 1994, but it is definitely no worse than its more modern siblings. It is a sci-fi story with cyberpunk influences and that is exactly what I like. Set in a far future Australia, the game centers around Robert Foster, who is kidnapped by security forces and forcefully brought to the Union City (former Sydney). Your job as Robert is to evade an untimely demise and find out their motives. Now I have to say I love point'n'click games (The Longest Journey and Syberia being two of my favourites) so I dove straight into the game and got a very pleasant experience. Both Robert and his pet robot Joey are very funny and there are lots of other interesting characters that make you chuckle. Setting is varied (despite the fact that there are not many areas to explore and I felt urgency about Robert's quest to find the elusive truth. So what are the shortcomings. First of all puzzles. I'm not a very hardcore adventure gamer that spends days to solve a hard puzzles and mainly play games for their story. Now I found BASS puzzles to be on the medium-hard level. Unlike TLJ and Syberia were I found them very intuitive and easily solved by careful thinking, BASS's puzzles left me lost and confused a few times and there was an unexpected amount of pixel-hunting. Also while the story was very engaging I for the most part couldn't suspend my disbelief in a few areas. First of all Robert doesn't even hide he is a wanted fugitive and babbles about that to anyone who deigns to listen. Any secret service agent with more then three grey cells in his skull would have caught him ten minutes into the game. Secondly, Robert has grown in a desert among primitive tribes-people and not only he isn't surprised by some of the technology in the City, no,sir, he quotes Isaac Asimov and his laws about robotics. And finally my third quibble is that the game uses left mouse button for examination and right button for execution and I have found no way to reverse that. This is a first game I have seen such control scheme in and it is very counterintuitive after playing many point'n'clicks with different controls. All in all, BASS is a worthy game to play and it is free, plus I didn't feel that its few shortcomings ruined it in any significant way.
Giants is another of those games I bought knowing next to nothing about and upon completing it (though I had a very hard time getting it to run) I can say I am pleased with the experience. There are two things that stand out in the game. First being a wonderful sense of humor. Not for once Giants takes itself seriously, combining ironic British humour, black comedy and slapstick to the point that you want to rewatch the cutscenes a few times in order to laugh again and again. The second thing of course is that the game mixes various genres and to a great surprise it works. At first you play Giants as a quirky third person shooter, but soon you encounter missions that include RTS elements and eventually you even compete in racing games. The single player campaign consists of three distinct stories: Meccs', Delphi's, and Kabuto's. The stories each have their own playing style an provide many hours of fun. The game even looks great: lush vistas of the Island, its plateaus, forests and hills look eye-pleasingly even after eleven years. If i have one problem with Giants is that if Meccs' and Delphi's stories are very varied with lots of different objectives, then Kabuto's story quickly degenerates into the same pattern: eat-grow-smash things-kill things-smash the door to the next level. I'm not saying that playing a King Kong wannabe is not fun at first but it grows tedious very fast. However the ending is fulfilling enough and I have to say I had lots of fun playing this game.
I bought “Outcast” completely on a whim based on the user reviews that were glowing and without any prior knowledge of the game. And what can I say – I was exceptionally pleased. “Outcast” is a Sci-Fi Action/Adventure game, concerning a travel to a parallel universe. You are a commander Cutter Slade and are tasked with saving the Earth and eventually an alternate world of Adelpha. This is a game that throws you head first into an unknown huge world and hopes you can make sense out of it, with the help of locals and your own wits. The territories of Adelpha are huge and have lots of quests – both mandatory and optional and you can complete a majority of them in any order you prefer. What pleased me the most is that this game tells a story. You play it and through completing missions and conversing with locals you are getting a bigger picture of what is happening. Also I found the game quite long. Well, I don’t have time to play much but still it wasn’t a ten hour game. Graphics are so-so even using an unofficial resolution increasing patch, but I wasn’t playing the game for eye candy and they served the purpose of keeping Adelpha alive. I liked the sound with the buzz of the city and people singing while working plus I actually liked voice acting. A minor drawback is that you have to set your hardware acceleration to Basic otherwise the background sound will go insane. I have only two problems with it. The first: it being very unstable. The game kept crashing on me occasionally (I don’t know if it was a problem of the game or the resolution patch, but I had to save often in order not to lose a progress). The other: it lacked a satisfying ending. Seeing “The End” my only thought was “WTF? That’s it?” and the stupid scene after the credits didn’t help to alleviate my disappointment. All in all it was a very solid game that kept me interested to the very (not so solid) end.
"Syberia" was released during the second wave of adventure games (post-2000) and is the first part in a steampunk (or is it clockworkpunk) duology (now apparently a trilogy as the third part is in the making). I fell in love with the game a long time ago and now revisiting it I can say that it withstood the test of time flawlessly. The first thing one notices about the game is that it looks beautiful. All the places are rendered so vividly that it seems they come alive. After playing this game you will definitely remember Valadilene or Komkolzgrad as you you have been in those places yourself. The game sports a very memorable musical score as well and the background noises and the voice acting fit the mood too. OK, some people think the acting to be sub-par, but I disagree. At least the voices of Kate and Oscar (however annoying his character might be) fit the story perfectly. So of the conversations on the phone might grate your teeth, but i must wonder if it was not intentional. As this is a point'n'click adventure game obviously there are puzzles. So how are they? Actually I would call them very easy. That may be disappointing for hardcore adventure gamers, but I relished in a chance to experience the story without a need to wander around for hours without having the slightest idea what to do or the need to use a walkthrough. Inherently, "Syberia" is a coming-of-age story despite Kate being an adult. From her first appearance as an always hurrying, no-nonsense lawyer firmly rooted to the ground we can see her change. We see her opening her eyes to the wide world around her. It is her former friends and colleagues on the phone that nail it how shallow her life was until she started on the big quest. If I have any quibbles it is that "Syberia" and "Syberia 2" are in essence one big game that was split in two, so the first part ends on a sort of cliffhanger note. But that shouldn't detract you from the enjoyment. If you like point and click games with great story, visuals, music and not too hard puzzles, this is a game for you.
