Classic point-and-click adventure games have been a part of my gaming history since almost the very beginning, and indeed are the core of some of my all-time favorite gaming memories. And that’s not to say I have played them all and maybe not even most of them; but ever so slowly, I have been working my way through a backlog. A few week sago, I played through Beneath A Steel Sky Special Edition on iOS via an old iPad Mini 2. I played through this classic on iOS as it seemed to be the ultimate version of the game that first came out on PC way back in 1994. I have had it in my backlog for literally decades. I was also wanting to finish it before finally embarking on its sequel that actually originally came out about eighteen months ago on PC and iOS. Heck, I came to find out that I even purchased a copy of said sequel, named Beyond A Steel Sky (BASS) on Steam upon closer review of my Library, I just never played it. Anyway, fast forward to present day, and we have the fresh release of the console release of BASS. As far as I can tell, it’s entirely the same game, although serious collector’s may want to check out the new physical steelbook releases.
With the original game having some out so long ago, you may be wondering how critical is it to have played through that old 1994 one? Having recently played through that original game and now BASS, I can comfortably say that it’s not all that critical. The opening cinematics of BASS do a sufficient job of giving you the synopsis of the story from the first game. You may also notice that the t-shirt that the lead character is wearing is the same one that he reveals during the original game, which is a pretty cool bit of fan service for those who catch it. Anyway, these very cinematics also show where BASS begins — ten years since the events of the original game and our protagonist, Robert Foster, has once gain found himself at home in The Gap, the very place he was trying to get to in the story of Beneath. You may remember (or will be introduced to in the cinematics) his robot pal Joey, who was ultimately left with running Union City as it saw fit, and by all accounts Joey did a great job making Union City a wonderful place, but things have changed and now some entity known as The Council runs Union City. The other major reveal in the opening cinema is the kidnapping of a son of Foster’s friend. While the trio were fishing, a four-legged robotic vehicle, known as a Stalker, comes out of the water and captures the boy. His friend gets severely injured in the incident, so Foster sets alone to get some answers and to find the kidnapped child.
The opening cinematic is presented in such a way that much of the main game is, too. You’ll notice a comic book approach to the art work, which is cel-shaded, and everything from the fonts to the style of the art just feels like you’re reading a graphic novel. In-game graphics are nice, and I have to say I don’t think I have ever played a game that tried to blend third person open world with point-and-click quite like this. If I’m totally honest, I still prefer the classic 2D look and feel of point and clicks, and the “thrill” of going into new ‘scenes’ or rooms.’ There isn’t quite that same “feel” with the larger, more open third person design. Additionally, camera angles and moving about in the game can be a little clunky at times, be it from frame rate hiccups or more so from user error. Moving about larger environments like this can be a bit slow and tedious as well, you know, compared to 2D when you’re able to just double click a door to exit the room for example. All that said, I get this is perhaps both an experiment and also where Revolution may be leaning towards for future games, whatever their reasons might be. I didn’t hate the design, but I’m in no rush to leave the classic 2D model, either.
Continuing on: voice-acting is excellent and the writing is also stellar, and there’s a lot of it, with many NPCs to interact with an lots of branching dialog to cover. In a lot of cases I think the amount of branching dialog available exceeded any other adventure game that I have played. The only catch to this really ends up being that some of the information gets repeated between characters, and that can get tedious, but at least it’s very well-written and the voice-acting is solid.
Having its core design in point-and-click adventure, the gameplay loop, if you will, consists of gathering information from characters, picking up objects in the world, and interacting with people and things to get closer to solving the mysteries of Union City. Players get to cut their teeth on most everything the game has to offer as far as this goes in the first large area, that sees you literally bridging the gap into Union City. Talking with characters to gather information, (often asking each of them about the same concepts but getting their unique views on it), helping NPCs out so they help you out, finding items to use within the environment, all of your typical adventure gameplay mechanics are here and pretty much work exactly the same despite the control and perspective changes.
In sum, Beyond A Steel Sky is a solid adventure game from a studio that has proven their skills and passion for the genre many times over many years. I’m really glad I finally got into the Steel Sky games this year, and if you like adventure games or looking for a strong story driven game with great writing and voice-acting, put Beyond on your short list. It’s not the most captivating or memorable adventure, but it has a lot going for it.
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